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FRIDAY 
NIGHTS 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR: 

CRITICAL 

ESSAYS:— Hogarth 
Tolstoy 
Turgenev 

PLA  YS:  —   The  Breaking  Point 
The  Feud 
Lords  and  Masters 
The  Trial  of  Jeanne 
D'Arc 

SATIRE:— Papa's  War  and 
Other  Satires 

FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

LITERARY  CRITICISMS  AND  APPRECIATIONS 


[FIRST  SERIES! 


EDWARD    GARNETT 


NEW   YORK 
ALFRED  •  A  •  KNOPF 
MCMXXII 


CX)PYRIGHT,    1922,    BY 
ALFRED  A.  KNOPF,  I^C 

Published,  May,  19SS 


Set  up  and  electrottiped  by  Vail-Ballou  Co.,  Binuhamton,  N.  Y. 
Paper  furnished  hy  W.  F.  Etherington  &  Co  .  New  York,  N.  Y. 
Bound  by  the  Plimpton  Press,  Norwood.  Mass. 

MANUFACTURED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMBBIOA 


NOTE 

My  thanks  are  due  to  Messrs.  Duckworth  for 
permission  to  reprint  the  Introductions,  respec- 
tively to  Mr.  C.  M.  Doughty's  "Wanderings  in 
Arabia";  Richard  Jefferies'  "Amaryllis  At  The 
Fair";  Ostrovsky's  "The  Storm";  also  to  Messrs. 
Chatto  &  Windus  and  the  Macmillan  Co.  for 
permission  to  reprint  "A  Note  on  Tchehov's 
Art" ;  also  to  the  editor  and  the  publisher  of  The 
Atlantic  Monthly  for  permission  to  reprint  the 
essays  Robert  Frost's  "North  of  Boston,"  "Some 
Remarks  on  English  and  American  Fiction,"  "A 
Gossip  on  Criticism,"  "Critical  Notes  on  Amer- 
ican Poets,"  and  finally  to  the  proprietor  of  The 
Dial  for  permission  to  reprint  "Mr.  D.  H.  Law- 
rence and  the  Moralists,"  and  some  passages  from 
"W.  H.  Hudson's  Nature  Books,"  which  orig- 
inally appeared  in  The  Humane  Review  in  1903. 

E.G. 


4S8743 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

1  NIETZSCHE  3 

2  W.  H.  HUDSON'S  "NATURE  BOOKS"         15 

3  TCHEHOV  AND  HIS  ART: 

(a)  A   NOTE   ON   TCHEHOV'S   ART  39 

(b)  TCHEHOv's     TRADITIONS  44 

(c)  TCHEHOV's    MODERNITY  5O 

4  IBSEN  AND  THE  ENGLISH  69 

5  MR.  JOSEPH  CONRAD: 

(a)  AN    APPRECIATION    IN    1898  83 

(b)  MR.  Conrad's  art  89 

(c)  MR.  Conrad's  basis  97 

6  MR.  C.  M.  DOUGHTY: 

(a)  "ARABIA  DESERTa"  10^ 

(b)  "ARABIA  DESERTa"  REDIVIVA  112 

(c)  MR.  doughty's  poems  1  i8 

7  OSTROVSKY'S  "THE  STORM"  135 

8  MR.     D.     H.     LAWRENCE     AND     THE 

MORALISTS  145 

9  RICHARD     JEFFERIES'     "AMARYLLIS 

AT  THE  FAIR"  163 

10    HENRY  LAWSON   AND   THE  DEMOC- 
RACY 177 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

11  SARAH  ORNE  JEWETT'S  TALES  189 

12  STEPHEN  CRANE  AND  HIS  WORK         201 

y^  \^     ROBERT    FROST'S    "NORTH    OF    BOS- 
TON" 221 

14  SOME    REMARKS    ON    ENGLISH    AND 

AMERICAN  FICTION  245 

15  AMERICAN  CRITICISM  AND  FICTION  275 

16  CRITICAL      NOTES      ON      AMERICAN 

POETS  311 

17  TWO  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS  335 

18  THE  CONTEMPORARY  CRITIC  349 


PREFACE 

The  work  of  a  publisher's  reader  cultivates  his 
sense  of  irony.  He  sees  so  many  writers  start,  so 
many  men  of  promise  never  arrive,  perhaps  for 
lack  of  encouragement.  He  witnesses  the  daily 
triumphs  of  the  mediocrities,  hailed  everywhere 
by  the  mediocre,  the  success  of  the  adriot  shallow 
talents  quickly  staled  by  the  years.  He  watches 
the  literary  cliques  at  work,  each  loyally  champi- 
oning its  members.  He  notes  with  a  smile  the 
pressmen  rushing  to  acclaim  the  work  of  a  writer 
suddenly  grown  popular,  whose  finest  effort,  ten 
years  back,  was  greeted  with  chilling  or  patronising 
nods.  He  sees  also  the  force  or  fire  of  the  finest 
craftsmen  finally  prevail,  and  the  day  of  other 
fine  talents  dawning.  The  publisher's  reader 
knows  what  literary  success  signifies:  he  has  no 
need  to  cultivate  his  sense  of  irony. 

But  what  have  these  reflections  to  do  with 
"Friday  Nights^"  the  reader  may  ask.  This: 
The  following  papers  and  essays  were  written 
mainly  in  years  gone  by  on  favorite  authors  whose 
sails  were  either  flapping  in  the  uncertain  breezes 
of  public  esteem,  or  had  borne  their  craft  on  far 
reaches  athwart  the  popular  tide.  The  writer  had 
a  habit  of  saying  to  himself  on  Friday  nights, 


PREFACE 

after  he  had  returned  to  his  cottage  from  town, 
"let  me  write  something  on  this  or  that  author, 
from  this  aspect  or  from  that  angle."  And  lying 
in  his  porch  he  would  reach  for  paper  and  ink  and 
jot  down  on  the  fly  leaf  of  a  book  some  notes  of 
"appreciations."  But  the  next  morning  the  tide 
of  life  immersed  and  the  open  air  or  friends 
beckoned  him.  He  rarely  completed  the  "appreci- 
ations" over  which  he  had  fallen  asleep  on  Friday 
nights.  However  some  he  finished  and  printed, 
and  looking  through  these  criticisms  and  eulogies 
to-day,  he  finds  that  his  opinions,  a  little  blunted 
by  time,  are  much  as  they  were  then.  He  has 
added  a  few  later  contributions,  and  sends  forth 
"Friday  Nights"  to  join  the  great  majority. 

Edward  Garnett. 
August,  1921 


NIETZSCHE 


NIETZSCHE  • 

THE  roads  of  progress  twist  every  way  to- 
day before  an  "enlightened"  Populace 
rushing  on  to  "find  itself" — where  ^  With 
Science  pressed  in  to  aid  man,  indicating  that  the 
routes  are  endless,  with  modern  evironments  star- 
ing a  little  stonily  at  the  breeding  democracies, 
will  not  the  European  crowd  necessarily  evolve 
upwards?  But  what  of  the  seas  of  cheaper,  shal- 
lower breeds  of  civilized  man  evolved  *?  What  if 
the  democracies,  using  Science  for  the  intensifi- 
cation of  material  problems,  specialize  on  utili- 
tarian lines,  with  a  machine-made  dead-level  life 
en  masse  ahead?  Progress  lies  every  way — but 
where?     Thus  Nietzsche  asks. 

Nietzsche's  appearance  in  European  thought 
marks  a  strong,  savage  reaction  against  the  waves 
of  democratic  beliefs  and  valuations  now  sub- 
merging the  old  aristocratic  standards,  more  or 
less  throughout  Europe.  Other  philosophers  such 
as  Herbert  Spencer  have  made  their  protest  against 
modem  tendencies;  other  thinkers,  as  Ibsen,  have 
put  some  of  Nietzsche's  questions  in  a  tentative 

[3] 


FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

spirit,,'  bfiit.  Nietzsche  is  the  first  man  to  fall  foul 
of  democratic  values  altogether,  and  try  to  for- 
mulate his  aristocratic  standards  of  life  into  a 
definite  creed — ^Master-Morality  versus  Slave- 
Morality. 

There  lies  Nietzsche's  value.  It  is  because 
Nietzsche  challenged  Modernity,  because  he  stood 
and  faced  the  modern  democratic  rush  which  is 
backed  by  rank  on  rank  of  busy  specialists  today, 
because  he  opposes  a  creative  aristocratic  ideal  to 
negate  the  popular  will,  instincts,  and  practice, 
that  he  is  of  such  special  significance.  He  showed 
the  way  the  crowd  is  not  going.  Than  this,  noth- 
ing is  more  valuable  in  an  age  where  the  will  of 
the  majority  is  apt  to  become  an  imitation  of  its 
chance  environment,  a  will  to  copy  the  majority; 
when  the  "standard  of  values"  is  chiefly  given  by 
the  mass  of  minds  that  are  anxious  to  think  and  do 
what  they  are  told  the  majority  is  thinking  and 
doing.  And  Nietzsche's  antipathy  to  the  crowd 
largely  springs  from  his  conviction  that  to  give 
the  reins  of  power  over  to  the  popular  mind  is 
to  put  a  premium  on  the  "wholesale,"  the  "aver- 
age," and  "machine-made"  ideal,  for  that  suits 
it,  that  pleases  it,  that  it  is  its  instinct  to  follow. 

Accordingly  Nietzsche's  ideal  of  a  stern,  hard, 
noble  nature,   with  an  instinct  for  beauty,  f!oT 

[4] 


NIETZSCHE 

fineness  of  life,  is  evolved  from  his  innate  hostility 
to  all  the  cheapness,  compromise,  and  coward- 
liness of  average  human  nature  that  is  conquered 
by  life,  moulded  by  despicable  circumstances, 
stunted  and  warped,  crushed  even  beneath  itself, 
through  its  lack  of  power.  "Power!  that  is  the 
test :  will-to-power,  that  is  the  secret  of  life,"  ran 
Nietzsche's  thought,  and  looking  back  to  the  fine 
ideals  of  pagan  societies  and  trying  to  account  for 
our  smug  human  growths  fostered  by  Christianity, 
he  hit  on  his  chief  thesis — that  there  are  two 
moralities  in  society,  the  morality  of  the  conquer- 
ors, the  aristocrats,  that  which  is  a  free,  joyous,  as- 
cending triumph  in  life,  and  the  morality  of  the 
slaves,  that  which  is  a  sick,  ascetic,  resigned,  re- 
ligious distrust  of  life,  and  a  reliance  on  a  life- 
to-come.  And  as  Christianity  is,  or  was,  the  gos- 
pel of  the  lowly  and  suffering,  evolved  for  "the 
mass,"  Nietzsche  sees  it  not  merely  as  a  solace 
to  the  weariness  of  life,  and  an  instrument  of 
"deteriorating  values,"  but  as  the  underminer  of 
the  free,  joyous,  powerful,  aristocratic  ideal,  and 
the  chief  instrument  of  the  poor,  weak,  and  cow- 
ardly in  their  accession  to  power. 

In  the  development  of  this  thesis  Nietzsche 
deals  with  the  provinces  of  the  specialists,  the 
historians,    critics,    scientists,    theologians,   much 

is] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

as  the  Roman  road-makers  dealt  with  the  jungle. 
He  goes  right  through  the  conceptions  of  the 
theologians,  metaphysicians,  and  historians,  using 
their  forest  of  contentions  and  brush-wood  of  in- 
tricacies as  piles  on  which  to  build  his  stern  and 
narrow  road.  That  is  why  he  is  so  immensely 
stimulating  and  invigorating.  The  road  of  his 
"valuation  of  life"  lands  you  right  outside  the 
old-fashioned  provinces.  Truly  it  takes  you  far  I 
further  than  you  are  ready  to  be  taken,  a  road  of 
assumptions  on  which  science  cannot  advance,  but 
the  air  is  invigorating,  it  takes  you  out  of  the 
mists  of  every  way  to  a  goal  of  its  own. 

To  find  this  goal  Nietzsche  passed  through  many 
contradictory  phases.  He  begins  as  an  enthusiast, 
the  ardent  and  generous  champion  of  other  men's 
goals,  the  follower  of  Wagner  and  Schopenhauer — • 
he  enters  into  the  blankly  materialistic  stage  of 
Bazarovism,  or  negation — he  emerges  again  with 
the  positive  creative  values  of  his  creed  of  life  as 
the  will-to-power.  He  is  going  to  conquer  life, 
he  is  going  to  wage  war  against  all  weariness  of  life, 
all  the  easy  goodness  of  safe,  comfortable  petty 
folk;  he  is  going  to  preach  the  necessity  of  evil  in 
man;  of  that  strife  by  which  man  becomes  hardier, 
bolder,  more  daring,  more  dangerous  and  heroic; 
he  is  going  to  root  out  pity  from  the  heart,  so  that 

[6] 


NIETZSCHE 

malformed,  unhappy  souls  may  cease  to  poison  the 
gay,  free,  joyous  love  of  life  by  their  aspersing  of 
Nature's  ethics  with  pious  lies  about  "Beyond 
Worlds,"  and  with  the  phantasmagoria  of  priestly 
concoctions.  He  is  going  to  see  Democracy, 
modern  Science,  and  Christianity  adjudged  and 
condemned  because  they  assist  into  life,  and  keep 
in  life,  and  help  to  propagate  all  the  sick, 
miserable,  deteriorating  types  that  the  joyous, 
powerful,  healthy  society  of  paganism  helped  out 
of  life  by  crushing  without  mercy.  To  wage  war 
on  Sentimentalism,  Pity,  Christianity,  Decadence 
in  all  forms,  and  Feminism,  that  is  the  road  by 
which  Nietzsche  sought  to  ^get  free  of  modern 
tendencies,  and  set  up  a  new  standard  of  values 
for  the  race.  And  his  doctrine,  arbitrary,  exces- 
sive, anti-scientific,  self-annihilating,  is  neverthe- 
less like  an  electric  current  traversing  the  current 
generalizations,  acceptances,  prejudices,  super- 
stitions of  modem  life;  it  is  a  mischievous,  ironical, 
shifting  search-light  flashing  keenly  amid  the 
thick  and  stupefying  mists  that  always  hang 
around  orthodox  opinion  and  popular  conformity 
in  every  age.  Poet,  philosopher,  classicist,  scien- 
tific critic  all  in  one,  Nietzsche  undoubtedly  was 
the  deepest,  though  most  biassed,  psychologist 
of  human  institutions  that  the  twentieth  century 

[7] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

has  seen.  His  analysis  of  the  Christian  and  ascetic 
ideal  in  life,  though  extremely  one-sided,  is,  on  its 
special  lines,  the  most  telling  and  brilliant  psycho- 
logical analysis  yet  made.  His  special  instinct  for 
tearing  off  the  idealistic  veils  which  hide  the 
religious  nature  in  its  use  of  human  suffering  as  a 
means  of  attaining  worldly  power,  makes  Nietzsche 
the  great  specialist  on  the  arts  of  priest-craft. 
And  as  Voltaire  lives  as  the  most  brilliant  adver- 
sary in  literature  of  the  Christian  faith,  so 
Nietzsche  lives  in  literature  as  the  most  powerful 
antagonist  of  the  Christian  soul. 

That  Nietzsche's  audacious  and  narrow  road 
ends  abruptly  in  the  mystical  doctrines  of  "Beyond 
Man,"  that  "The  Eternal  Recurrence,"  ended  in 
the  madness  of  colossal  egoism,  is  but  proof  too 
painful  of  the  severity,  honesty,  and  intensity  of 
his  intellectual  life.  Little  men  who  talk  of  their 
own  sanity  and  of  the  sanity  of  others  are  but 
knocking  complacently  at  the  lath-and-plaster 
walls  of  their  meagre  consciousness.  The  de- 
velopment of  Nietzsche's  genius,  and  the  germ 
of  madness  lying  in  his  doctrine  of  Life  as  the 
wrll-to-power,  form  one  of  the  most  interesting 
documents  to  the  pathologist  and  the  critic. 

Nietzsche's  special  inspiration,  the  key  that 
unlocked  his  most  secret  depths,  was  pain.    Pain, 

[8] 


NIETZSCHE 

cruel  and  prolonged,  pursued,  chased,  and  captured 
him,  deepened  the  world  for  him,  and  forced  into 
the  light  all  the  tendencies  of  his  nature.  It  was 
pain  attacking  his  aristocratic  soul  that  brought 
out  all  his  endurance,  power  of  scorning,  force  of 
resistance,  pain  that  emphasized  so  violently  the 
will-to-power.  For  what  is  this  philosophy,  in  his 
case,  but  the  definition  of  the  spirit  in  which  he 
faced  an  unsparing  reality,  with  which  he  dared 
it,  and  scorned  to  bend.  And  this  power  to  face 
suffering,  the  lack  of  which  casts  the  weak,  deli- 
cate, or  ordinary  mind  outside  itself,  into  the  arms 
of  "reliance  on  a  God,"  exhibited  in  a  satiric  light 
to  Nietzsche  the  sufferings  of  inferior  natures,  and 
made  vulgar  all  sentimentalism,  expression  of  suf- 
fering, the  daily  illusions  of  mankind,  and  the 
panaceas  of  the  priests.  And  suffering  also  threw 
into  Nietzsche's  mind  the  deep  light  of  under- 
standing as  to  how  life  fabricates  in  man  his 
petty  concepts  of  what  is  good  and  what  is  evil, 
what  he  wishes  to  avoid  and  escape — i.  e.^  what 
he  is  afraid  of.  Thus  pain  brought  to  Nietzsche 
the  necessity  for  hardness,  courage,  sternness 
even  cruelty,  if  mankind  is  to  be  shaped  on  fine, 
strong,  and  heroic  lines.  Pain  also  it  was  that 
gave  him  his  aspiration  towards  joy,  gaiety,  and 
the  mocking  spirit,  because  these  are  the  antithe- 

[9] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

sis  to  the  weak  despairing  soul.  But  to  give 
in  to  suffering  I  to  give  in  to  life !  that  is  the  part 
of  the  vulgar  soul;  to  face  reality,  to  triumph 
over  it,  was  the  fundamental  instinct  of 
Nietzsche's  indomitable  spirit.  Pain  therefore  it 
was  that  made  Nietzsche  inhuman,  intensified  his 
caste  bias,  and  transformed  his  natural  distaste 
for  the  cheap  idealism  and  shallow  optimism  of 
the  mass  of  men  (who  cannot  either  suffer  life 
nobly  or  enjoy  nobly)  into  a  virulent  hatred  of 
Modernity,  that  Modernity  which  advertises  all 
its  benefits  aloud !  and  is  afraid  to  even  recognize 
its  weaknesses.  Suffering  it  was  that  made 
Nietzsche  isolate  himself  from  the  outer  world, 
and  concentrate  himself  on  the  immensely  richer 
world  of  passions,  tastes,  hatred  and  distastes 
within  him.  Pain  forces  him  to  revise  all  his  ac- 
quired opinions,  to  cast  away  his  enthusiasms,  his 
first  idealistic  interpretations  of  life,  and  it  forces 
himself  also  into  keen  self-analysis,  into  a  passion 
for  analysing  all  "goodness"  and  discovering  its 
motive. 

Pain  forces  him  into  cavernous  depths  to  face 
hidden  truths  that  undermine  belief,  that  destroy 
the  appearances,  the  beauty,  the  spontaneity  of 
life;  till  at  last,  in  the  smouldering  heat  of  his  de- 
structiveness,  the  flash  of  a  colossal  egoism  shows 

[10] 


NIETZSCHE 

that  his  brain  has  reached  the  danger-point 
where  he  can  bear  no  more.  How,  if  at  the  point 
where  wickedness  dances  its  old  dance  of  exulta- 
tion, where  Evil  openly  shows  itself  the  eternal 
companion  and  necessary  habitant  of  the  world, 
how  if  the  world  itself,  with  its  old  superstitious 
belief  in  good  and  evil,  has  grown  shadowy  I 
How  if  the  ego  is  only  conscious  of  its  drama, 
necessity^ 

He  can  bear  no  morel  But  his  creed  is  to 
endure,  to  conquer,  and  he  goes  further  still,  along 
his  lonely  road,  goes  so  far  that  to  continue  he  must 
cast  all  humanity  from  himself;  and  now  he 
becomes  like  a  surgeon  cutting  his  own  flesh  and 
casting  out  all  but  purpose.  It  is  strange,  that 
"love"  which  he  has  cast  out  as  weakness  rushes 
back  on  him  as  love  for  "Higher  Man."  But  find- 
ing a  way  is  still  his  goal.  Courageous  spirit  I 
evading  desperation  by  facing  self,  by  exploring 
the  loneliest  and  bleakest  lands  of  his  tortured 
self,  he  must  go  on,  for  how  can  he  shirk  knowing 
what  is  worse,  what  is  to  come^  Strange  irony, 
that  to  endure  he  had  to  cast  his  nobility  from  him 
and  praise  himself!  "Zarathustra"  is  all  self- 
praise,  the  praise  of  the  will  which  will  not  be 
beaten,  even  if  driven  to  the  insanity  of  egoism, 
with  the  rich  world  become  poor,  with  the  rich 

[n] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

world  blotted  out.  Is  not  the  will-to-power  logi- 
cally a  creed  of  self-annihilation?  Nietzsche 
matched  himself  against  life,  therefore  he  loved 
Necessity  his  fate.  "When  drinkest  thou  this 
strange  soul,  oh  sky  Eternity*?"  "Do  I  seek  for 
my  happiness*?  I  seek  for  my  work."  Life  beat 
him,  as  it  beats  us  all,  whether  we  oppose  it  or 
lie  down  before  it.  Does  it  matter  that  the  end 
came  with  crashing  violence,  that  he  dared  too 
much,  while  others  dare  too  little?  That  for  his 
defeat  he  paid,  while  others  pay  for  their  safety? 
What  each  struggles  after  is  perhaps  always  com- 
mensurate with  the  price. 

1899 


[12] 


W.     H.     HUDSON'S    ' 
BOOKS" 


NATURE 


W.  H.  HUDSON'S  "NATURE  BOOKS" 

ONE  of  the  commonplace  phrases  in  every- 
body's mouth,  the  meaning  of  which  is  of 
necessity  grasped  in  the  feeblest  and  most 
fragmentary  manner,  is  "the  fecundity  of  nature," 
that  same  illimitable  force  of  hers  that  perpetually 
brings  myriads  of  forms  of  sentient  life  out  of 
every  rood  of  earth's  surface,  that  protean  force 
that  creates  the  endless  recurrence  of  new  waves 
of  life  in  the  eternal  ocean  of  the  Universe  flowing 
round  us.  Man,  in  fact,  can  never  adequately 
stretch  and  sharpen  his  faculties  so  as  to  become 
purely  absorbed,  as  a  spectator,  in  the  vast  drama 
of  nature's  myriad  activities,  and  enjoy  it  as  the 
one  entrancing  supreme  spectacle,  inasmuch  as 
nature  has  cunningly  given  to  man's  vision  the 
illusive  perspective  of  self,  and  his  outlook  must 
always  be  blurred  by  this  partial  lens  with  its 
finitely  human  focus.  If  we  can  momentarily 
conceive  a  man  gifted  with  the  fabulous  Merlin's 
power  of  entering  by  turn  into,  and  feeling  with 
all  the  myriad  forms  of  sentient  life,  and  on  chang- 
ing back  again  to  human  flesh  remembering  the 

[15] 


FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

sensations  of  each  of  his  transformations,  we 
should  be  stricken  no  less  by  an  appalling  sense  of 
our  human  limitations  than  of  our  human  powers 
terrible  in  comparison  with  the  animals'.  Such 
a  man's  soul  would  be  filled  with  the  mysterious 
pantheism  which  breathes  in  the  Lay  of  Amer- 
gin:— 

"I  am  the  wind  which  breathes  upon  the  sea 
I  am  the  wave  of  the  ocean, 
I  am  the  murmur  of  the  billows, 
I  am  the  ox  of  the  seven  combats. 
I  am  the  vulture  upon  the  rocks, 
I  am  a  beam  of  the  sun, 
I  am  the  fairest  of  plants, 
I  am  a  wild  boar  in  valour, 
I  am  a  salmon  in  the  water, 
I  am  a  lake  in  the  plain, 
I  am  a  word  of  science, 
I  am  the  point  of  the  lance  of  battle, 
I  am  the  God  who  creates  in  the  head  of  man 
the  fire  of  thought," 

and  we  should  realize  as  never  before  that  man's 
mind,  though  the  most  marvellously  complex  in- 
strument of  all,  is  still,  as  it  were,  but  a  human 
eyelet  hole,  through  which  the  Universe  can  only 
be  refracted  back  to  us  in  certain  aspects  of  its 
incalculable  whole.  Even  were  man's  intimate 
penetration  into  nature's  secrets  to  be  increased 

[16] 


HUDSON'S   "NATURE   BOOKS" 

a  thousandfold,  we  must  still  look  on  man's  con- 
sciousness as  an  instrument  capable  only  of  the  ad- 
justments peculiar  to  his  nature.  But  this  being 
so,  all  the  more  do  we  prize  those  original  minds 
among  us  whose  talents  are,  as  it  were,  new  vari- 
ations of  our  ordinary  mental  vision,  talents  which 
carry  us  some  little  way  beyond  the  over-worked 
channels  of  our  busy  human  interests,  and  make 
us  penetrate  into  that  vast  archipelago  of  nature's 
life  where  man's  being  and  doing  appear  as  merely 
one  sort  of  phenomena,  as  the  human  speck  in  the 
universal  ocean  of  life.  W.  H.  Hudson  has 
one  of  these  creative  minds,  and  he  is  the  chief 
writer  on  nature's  life,  today,  whose  spiritual 
vision  is  inspired  by  some  elusive  strain  of  Mer- 
lin's fabled  power. 

At  first  sight  all  the  great  secrets  of  the  future 
would  seem  to  belong  to  the  scientific  students, 
to  the  calm,  "passionless"  observers  equipped  with 
the  ever-increasing  marvellous  instruments  that 
Science  places  daily  in  their  hands,  but  at  first 
sight  only.  Admitting  that  the  discoveries  of 
the  great  captains  of  Science,  and  the  observations 
of  the  vast  band  of  humble  workers,  have  im- 
measurably increased  our  knowledge  of  nature's 
laws  and  indeed  revolutionized  our  conceptions  of 
the  formation  and  evolution  of  the  material  uni- 

[171 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

verse,  it  is  obvious  that  the  scientists  themselves 
cannot  escape  the  great  law  of  the  specialization 
of  functions,  and  that  their  angle  of  vision,  no 
matter  how  adjusted  or  to  what  ends  directed,  can 
never  serve  them  as  a  magical  glass  harmonizing 
and  uniting  all  the  manifold  human  visions  in 
general.  The  scientific  view  has  in  fact  its  strictly 
defined  sphere  of  applications,  and  has  little 
power  to  enter  into,  for  example,  the  fields  of 
vision  of  seers,  such  as  the  poets,  the  musicians,  the 
painters,  the  philosophers,  or  the  great  religious 
teachers.  Indeed,  in  recognizing  the  triumph  of 
Science  in  explaining  the  working  of  vast  ranges 
of  nature's  laws,  we  cannot  help  seeing  that  our 
whole  human  understanding  of  life  has  not  come 
to  us  through  any  "scientific  method"  of  observa- 
tion, and  that  the  "scientific  method"  can  only  be 
used  as  the  auxiliary  tool  of  our  instinctive  per- 
ceptions. For  example,  the  great  scientist  when 
he  wishes  to  comprehend  his  wife's  feelings  about 
him  does  not  employ  a  scientific  method  to  deter- 
mine them!  So  we  are  justified  in  turning  round 
on  the  scientific  men,  and  saying  to  them :  "What 
you  tell  us  is  of  extraordinary  light-giving  value, 
but  you  will  be  the  first  to  admit  that  your  demon- 
strations of  fact  can  never  synthesize  the  most 
important  fact  of  all?     You  tell   us  countless 

[18] 


HUDSON'S    "NATURE    BOOKS" 

facts  about  the  laws  of  life,  but  the  actual  spirit 
of  life,  its  living  feeling,  which  is  the  essential  vol- 
atile principle  of  life,  can  never  be  fully  assessed 
by  you."  "Quite  so,"  the  scientific  men  will  re- 
join; "we  don't  pretend  to  be  able  to  analyse  feel- 
ing, except  in  some  of  its  physiological  causes  and 
psychological  effects,  and  therefore  our  descriptive 
studies  nearly  always  leave  it  on  one  side  as  an  in- 
determinable force." 

Now  the  surprising  characteristic  of  Mr.  Hud- 
son's writings  is  that  this  mysterious  force  of 
feeling,  ever  present  in  nature's  life,  which  modern 
scientific  writers  agree  to  leave  out,  Mr.  Hudson 
puts  in.  "Ah  I  but  he  puts  his  own  human  feel- 
ings into  his  descriptions,  and  that  is  unscientific," 
the  reader  may  exclaim.  Wait  a  little.  Himself 
a  scientific  student  he  has  an  instinctively  poetic 
and  artistic  method  of  his  own  in  examining  liv- 
ing nature,  a  method  which  interprets  for  us  "the 
facts"  of  the  trained  observers,  and  synthesizes 
for  us  the  living  creature's  spirit — a  method 
which  is  indispensable  to  any  spiritual  comprehen- 
sion of  nature.  Our  knowledge  of  the  workings 
of  the  human  mind  and  of  human  life  that  the 
great  creative  artists,  from  Homer  to  Shakespeare, 
have  brought  to  us  may  be  "unscientific"  in  this 
sense,  that  it  is  not  demonstrable  of  proof,  but  it 

[19] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

is  none  the  less  knowledge.  The  key  that  has 
unlocked  the  gates  of  the  vast  regions  of  spiritual 
life  is  our  mysterious  instinctive  feeling  about 
life.  A  page  from  Mr.  Hudson's  last  book, 
"Hampshire  Days"  will  best  illustrate  the  degree 
to  which  his  subtle  artistic  method  of  interpreting 
"scientific  facts"  throws  open  new  avenues  in 
approaching  nature's  life: — 

"The  end  of  the  little  history — the  fate  of  the  ejected 
nestling  and  the  attitude  of  the  parent  robins — remains 
to  be  told.  When  the  young  cuckoo  throws  out  the  nest- 
lings from  nests  in  trees,  hedges,  bushes,  and  reeds,  the 
victims,  as  a  rule,  fall  some  distance  to  the  ground,  or  in 
the  water,  and  are  no  more  seen  by  the  old  birds.  Here 
the  young  robin,  when  ejected,  fell  a  distance  of  but  five 
or  six  inches,  and  rested  on  a  broad,  bright  green  leaf, 
where  it  was  an  exceedingly  conspicuous  object;  and  when 
the  mother  robin  was  on  the  nest — and  at  this  stage  she 
was  on  it  a  greater  part  of  the  time — warming  that  black- 
skinned  toad-like,  spurious  babe  of  hers,  her  bright,  in- 
telligent eyes  were  looking  full  at  the  other  one,  just  be- 
neath her,  which  she  had  grown  in  her  body,  and  had 
hatched  with  her  warmth,  and  was  her  very  own.  I 
watched  her  for  hours ;  watched  her  when  warming  the 
cuckoo,  when  she  left  the  nest,  and  when  she  returned 
with  food,  and  warmed  it  again,  and  never  once  did  she 
pay  the  least  attention  to  the  outcast  lying  so  close  to  her. 
There,  on  its  green  leaf,  it  remained,  growing  colder  by 
degrees,  hour  by  hour,  motionless,  except  when  it  lifted 

[20] 


HUDSON'S   "NATURE   BOOKS" 

its  head  as  if  to  receive  food,  then  dropped  it  again,  and 
when,  at  intervals,  it  twitched  its  body,  as  if  trying  to 
move.  During  the  evening  even  these  slight  motions 
ceased,  though  that  feeblest  flame  of  life  was  not  yet  ex- 
tinguished ;  but  in  the  morning  it  was  dead  and  cold  and 
stiff;  and  just  above  it,  her  bright  eyes  on  it,  the  mother 
robin  sat  on  the  nest  as  before,  warming  her  cuckoo. 

"How  amazing  and  almost  incredible  it  seems  that  a 
being  such  as  a  robin,  intelligent  above  most  birds,  as  we 
are  apt  to  think,  should  prove  in  this  instance  to  be  a  mere 
automaton  !  The  case  would,  I  think,  have  been  different 
if  the  ejected  one  had  made  a  sound,  since  there  is 
nothing  which  more  excites  the  parent  bird,  or  which  is 
more  instantly  responded  to  than  the  cry  of  hunger  or 
distress  of  the  young.  But  at  this  early  stage  the  nest- 
ling is  voiceless — another  point  in  favour  of  the  parasite. 
The  sight  of  its  young,  we  see,  slowly  and  dumbly  dying, 
touches  no  chord  in  the  parent;  there  is,  in  fact,  no 
recognition;  once  out  of  the  nest  it  is  no  more  than  a 
coloured  leaf,  or  bird-shaped  pebble,  or  fragment  of  clay. 

"It  happened  that  my  young  fellow-watchers,  seeing 
that  the  ejected  robin  if  left  there  would  inevitably  perish, 
proposed  to  take  it  in  to  feed  and  rear  it — to  save  it,  as 
they  said ;  but  I  advised  them  not  to  attempt  such  a  thing, 
but  rather  to  spare  the  bird.  To  spare  it  the  misery  they 
would  inflict  on  it  by  attempting  to  fill  its  parents'  place. 
...  It  would  perhaps  have  a  wholesome  effect  on  their 
young  minds  and  save  them  from  grieving  overmuch  at 
the  death  of  a  newly  hatched  robin,  if  they  would  con- 
sider this  fact  of  the  pain  that  is  and  must  be.  .  .  .  When 
summer  came  round  again  they  would  find  no  more  birds 
[21] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

than  they  had  now.  And  so  it  would  be  in  all  places ;  all 
that  incalculable  increase  would  have  perished.  Many 
millions  would  be  devoured  by  rapacious  birds  and  beasts  ; 
millions  more  would  perish  of  hunger  and  cold ;  millions 
of  migrants  would  fall  by  the  way,  some  in  the  sea,  and 
some  on  the  land  ;  those  that  returned  from  distant  regions 
would  be  a  remmant.  It  is  not  only  that  this  inconceiv- 
able amount  of  bird-life  must  be  destroyed  each  year,  but 
we  cannot  suppose  that  death  is  not  a  painful  process. 
In  a  vast  majority  of  cases,  whether  the  bird  slowly  per- 
ishes of  hunger  and  weakness,  or  is  pursued  and  captured 
by  birds  and  beasts  of  prey,  or  is  driven  by  cold  adverse 
winds  and  storms  into  the  waves,  the  pain,  the  agony, 
must  be  great.  The  least  painful  death  is  undoubtedly 
that  of  the  bird,  that,  weakened  by  want  of  sustenance, 
dies  by  night  of  cold  in  severe  weather.  It  is  indeed 
most  like  the  death  of  the  nestling,  but  a  few  hours  out 
of  the  shell,  which  has  been  thrown  out  of  the  nest,  and 
which  soon  grows  cold  and  dozes  its  feeble,  unconscious 
life  away.  .  .  . 

"I  am  not  sure  that  I  said  all  this,  or  marshalled  fact 
and  argument  in  the  precise  order  in  which  they  are  here 
set  down.  I  fancy  not,  as  it  seems  more  than  could  well 
have  been  spoken,  while  we,  standing  there  in  the  late 
evening  sunlight  by  that  primrose  bank,  looking  down  on 
the  little  flesh-coloured  mite  in  its  scant  clothing  of  black 
down,  fading  out  of  life  on  its  cold  green  leaf.  But  what 
was  said  did  not  fail  of  its  effect,  so  that  my  young 
render-hearted  hearers,  who  had  begun  to  listen  with  moist 
eyes,  secretly  accusing  me,  perhaps,  of  want  of  feeling, 
were  content  in  the  end  to  let  it  be — to  go  away  and  leave 

[22] 


HUDSON'S    "NATURE    BOOKS" 

it  to  its  fate  in  that  mysterious  green  world  we,  too,  live 
in  and  do  not  understand,  in  which  life  and  death,  and 
pleasure  and  pain,  are  interwoven  light  and  shade." 

This  descriptive  analysis  of  bird-life  is  satu- 
rated with  human  feeling.  But  do  we  lose  or 
gain  knowledge  thereby'?  Does  it  not  carry  us 
from  low  to  higher  janges  of  comprehension*? 
Let  us  suppose  that  it  were  paraphrased  in  "impas- 
sive," scientific  language,  and  its  artistic  and  po- 
etu:  shades  of  feeling  were  expunged.  In  that 
case  the  bald  facts  recounted  would  remain  as  a 
groundwork,  but  the  very  spirit  of  life  in  the 
thing  seen  would  be  altered,  our  insight  and  com- 
prehension would  be  infinitely  lessened.  So  the 
"impassive"  scientists  themselves  are  in  a  di- 
lemma. We  cannot  actually  comprehend  na- 
ture's life  without  being  emotionally  affected  by 
it,  i.e.^  our  comprehension  is  largely  the  emotion 
it  excites  in  us.  So  face  to  face  with  nature's 
wild  life  "scientific  observation"  must  be  supple- 
mented and  inspired  by  artistic  and  poetic 
methods  of  divination.  To  comprehend  sentient 
life  we  must  employ  all  the  old  emotional  tools 
of  the  human  mind,  all  those  shades  of  aesthetic 
sensibility  and  of  human  imagination  by  which 
the  great  artists  and  poets  seize  and  apprehend  the 
character  of  life.     The  scientists  are  in  their  ele- 

[23] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

ment  in  investigating  the  working  of  physical 
laws,  in  determining  the  properties  or  the  func- 
tions of  living  organisms,  but  a  knowledge  of 
these  laws  no  more  qualifies  them  to  apprehend 
the  character,  nature,  or  spirit  of  the  life  of  na- 
ture's wild  creatures  under  the  open  sky  than  a 
perfect  knowledge  of  anatomy  can  make  a  man  a 
Praxiteles. 

And  wild  nature's  life  being  a  natural  drama  of 
instinct,  an  unceasing  play  of  hunger,  love,  bat- 
tle, courtship,  fear,  parental  emotion,  vanity,  and 
most  of  all,  perhaps,  pure  enjoyment  of  physical 
powers,  it  is  obvious  that  every  man  who  is  ir- 
responsive in  his  feelings,  or  possessed  of  a  dull 
artistic  imagination,  or  weak  sesthetic  sensibilities, 
must  remain  practically  aloof  from  wild  nature, 
and  its  infinite  feast  of  characteristic  displays. 
He  will  not  see  or  feel  what  is  going  on  in  forest 
and  meadow,  and  so,  remaining  blind  to  the  whole 
force  and  spirit  of  nature,  he  will  not  be  able  to 
pronounce  on  its  life. 


II 


It  is  indeed  by  his  rare  and  rich  endowment  of 
many  complex  shades  of  feeling,  by  the  finest 
and  most  delicate  variability  of  mood,  running  up 

[24] 


HUDSON'S   "NATURE   BOOKS" 

the  whole  emotional  gamut,  that  we  explain  Mr. 
Hudson's  genius  for  entering  into,  and  interpret- 
ing back  to  us,  wild  nature's  life.  "What  if 
Truth  be  a  woman,"  said  Nietzsche,  in  one  of  his 
brilliant  flashes,  "and  what  if  the  solemn  old 
philosophers  have  gone  just  the  wrong  way  to 
work  to  get  her  to  reveal  herself?"  or  words  to 
that  effect.  And  in  face  of  nature's  infinite 
beauty,  deceptiveness,  complexity  of  motives,  and 
capriciousness,  in  face  of  the  complex  ruses  by 
which  she  accomplishes  her  ends,  of  the  feminine 
care  with  which  she  arranges  appearances,  and 
fulfils  her  purposes  under  the  seductive  cover  of 
sensuous  delights,  the  man  who  would  penetrate 
into  her  lite  must  treat  her  much  as  a  man  turns 
to  the  woman  who  allures  and  fascinates  him, 
for  whose  bewitching  presence  his  spirit  hungers. 
He  may  indeed  be  incredulous,  cool,  and  doubting, 
knowing  that  she  constantly  plays  with  him,  and 
cheats  him,  and  that  if  he  grasps  one  of  her  mean- 
ings her  whole  subtlety  is  infinitely  beyond  him; 
but  if  he  is  not  sympathetic  in  her  presence,  if 
he  does  not  feel  that  her  beauty  is  beyond  all 
beauty,  she  will  deceive  him  far  more  I  And  if  he 
does  not  please  her  by  his  attentions  she  will  treat 
him  as  Truth  has  treated  the  ugly  old  philos- 
ophers, and  he  will  never  really  possess  her  or  be 

[25] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

one  with  her.  Now  Mr.  Hudson's  method  face 
to  face  witih  nature,  this  curious  mingling  ot 
scientific  curiosity  to  know  all  about  her,  with 
artistic  susceptibility  to  her  charms,  derives  its 
inner  inspiration  from  what  is  essentially  a  poet's 
spiritual  passion  to  lose  himself  in  contemplation 
of  her  infinitely  marvellous  universe.  Though  it 
is  indeed  largely  by  the  gleams  and  flashes  of 
light  arising  from  the  poets'  communion  with 
nature  that  man's  spiritual  sense  of  the  great 
Universe  flo\ving  around  him  has  best  found  its 
expression,  the  poets  in  general  (some  of  the 
great  poets  excepted)  have  only  tentatively  ex- 
plored the  vast  archipelago  of  nature's  life  that 
exists  for  itself  outside  man's  world  of  thought, 
though  it  exists  indeed  in  invisible  relations  with 
it.  It  is  Mr.  Hudson's  distinction,  however,  to 
have  sought  and  followed  these  mysterious  realms 
of  nature's  life,  not  as  a  scientific  specialist,  as 
a  botanist,  or  zoologist,  studying  natural  laws  of 
structure,  habit,  or  environment,  but  in  the  same 
spirit  of  creative  enjoyment  with  which  the  great 
poets  examine  and  search  human  life,  i.  e.^  with 
a  sense  not  only  of  what  this  life's  character  is 
as  life,  but  of  what  all  this  absorbing  drama  of 
nature's  eternal  fecundity  signifies  spiritually  to 
man.     Any  adequate  treatment  of  Mr.  Hudson's 

[26] 


HUDSON'S   "NATURE   BOOKS" 

writings  would  therefore  have  to  analyse  the  ex- 
treme originality  with  which  he  enlarges  both  the 
poets'  and  the  scientists'  horizons,  at  one  and 
the  same  time,  by  showing  the  poets  new  worlds 
to  conquer,  and  by  showing  the  scientists  that 
their  methods,  though  indispensable,  do  not  carry 
us  far  enough.  We  cannot  pursue  this  analysis 
in  detail  here  beyond  saying  that  Mr.  Hudson's 
work  as  an  ornithologist  has  been  to  cut  away, 
as  it  were,  whole  sections  of  dead  and  petrified 
lore,  from  our  shelves,  and  replace  them  by  a  se- 
ries of  the  most  delicate  living  studies  of  the  char- 
acter, habits,  and  genius  of  bird-life.^  Nor  have 
we  space  to  dwell  here  on  what  we  chose  to  call, 
a  little  arbitrarily,  his  artistic  feats  of  delinea- 
tion, by  which  he  has  drawn  away  with  a  magi- 
cian's hand  the  heavy  veils  of  misunderstanding 
with  which  our  dull  ordinary  brains,  scientific  or 
otherwise,  cloak  the  actual  life  led,  with  the  rich 
zest  of  instinct,  by  the  great  non-human  popula- 
tions of  squirrels,  jays,  weasels,  hornets,  moths, 
spiders,  adders,  stag-beetles,  shrew-mice,  crickets, 
dragon-flies,  moles,  snails,  and  the  thousands  of 
other  little  creatures  to  whom  nature  has  given 

^  Birds  in  a  Village.     (Chapman  and  Hall,  1893.) 
Birds   in  London.     (Longmans,   Green   and   Co.,   1893.) 
Birds  and  Man.     (Longmans,  Green   and   Co.,   1901.) 

[27] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

the  earth  no  less  than  to  us.  The  two  books, 
"Hampshire  Days"  and  "Nature  in  Downland," 
contain,  as  it  were,  la  vie  intime  of  all  these  in- 
dependent tribes  of  creatures,  and  chronicle  their 
wars,  their  loves,  their  hates,  their  prejudices,  and 
the  countless  agitations  of  their  days,  with  all  the 
insight,  grace,  whimsical  humour,  and  delicious 
freshness  that  the  true  artists  employ  in  fashion- 
ing our  human  chronicles.  We  pass  over  these 
feats  of  artistic  penetration  for  the  pleasure  of 
quoting  a  very  simple  unobtrusive  passage  in 
"Birds  in  a  Village,"  a  passage  by  studying  which 
attentively  the  reader  will  be  able  to  forecast  the 
critical  road  he  is  here  asked  to  travel : — 

"Meanwhile  the  girl  talked  eagerly  to  the  little  ones, 
calling  their  attention  to  the  different  birds.  Drawing 
near,  I  also  became  an  interested  listener;  and  then  in 
answer  to  my  questions  she  began  telling  me  what  all 
these  strange  fowls  were.  'This,'  she  said,  glad  to  give 
information,  'is  the  Canadian  goose,  and  there  is  the 
Egyptian  goose,  and  here  is  the  king  duck  coming  towards 
us ;  and  do  you  see  that  large  beautiful  bird  standing  by 
itself,  that  will  not  come  to  be  fed  ?  That  is  the  golden 
duck.  But  that  is  not  its  real  name ;  I  don't  know  them 
all ;  so  I  name  them  for  myself.  I  call  that  one  the  golden 
duck  because  in  the  sun  its  feathers  sometimes  shine  like 
gold.'  It  was  a  rare  pleasure  to  listen  to  her,  and  seeing 
what  sort  of  a  girl  she  was,  and  how  much  in  love  with  her 

[28] 


HUDSON'S  "NATURE  BOOKS" 

subject,  I,  in  my  turn,  told  her  a  good  deal  about  the  birds 
before  us,  also  of  other  birds  she  had  never  seen,  nor 
heard  of,  and  after  she  had  listened  eagerly  for  some 
minutes,  and  had  then  been  silent  a  little  while,  she  all  at 
,  once  pressed  her  two  hands  together,  and  exclaimed  rap- 
turously, 'Oh,  I  do  so  love  the  birds.'  I  replied  that  that 
was  not  strange,  since  it  is  impossible  for  us  not  to  love 
whatever  is  lovely,  and  of  all  living  things  birds  were 
made  most  beautiful. 

"Then  I  walked  away,  but  could  not  forget  the  words 
she  had  exclaimed,  her  whole  appearance,  the  face  flushed 
with  colour,  the  eloquent  brown  eyes  sparkling,  the  pressed 
palms,  the  sudden  spontaneous  passion  of  delight  and 
desire  in  her  tone.  The  picture  was  in  my  mind  all  that 
day,  and  lived  through  the  next,  and  so  wrought  on  me 
that  I  could  not  longer  keep  away  from  the  birds,  which 
I,  too,  loved ;  for  now  all  at  once  it  seemed  that  life  was 
not  life  without  them ;  that  I  was  grown  sick  and  all  my 
senses  dim ;  that  only  by  drenching  it  in  their  wild  melody 
could  my  tired  brain  recover  its  lost  vigour." — (Birds  in 
a  Village,  p.  6.) 

Ill 

There  is  a  pregnant  passage  in  "Resurrection" 
in  which  Tolstoy  says : — 

"Without  these  conditions,  the  terrible  acts  I  witnessed 
today  would  be  impossible  in  our  times.  It  all  lies  in  the 
fact  that  men  think  there  are  circumstances  when  one  may 
deal  with  human  beings  without  love ;  and  there  are  no 
such  circumstances.     One  may  deal  with  things  without 

[29] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

love ;  one  may  cut  down  trees,  make  bricks,  hammer  iron, 
without  love ;  but  you  cannot  deal  with  men  without  it, 
just  as  one  cannot  deal  with  bees  without  being  careful. 
If  you  deal  carelessly  with  bees  you  will  injure  them,  and 
will  yourself  be  injured.     And  so  with  men." 

Does  the  reader  see  the  relation  between  this 
passage  from  Tolstoy's  "Resurrection,"  and  the 
passage  we  have  quoted  above  from  "Birds  in  a 
Village'"?  The  secret  fascination  of  Mr.  Hud- 
son's outlook,  the  real  force  of  his  spiritual  vision 
arises  from  his  refusal  to  divide  mari' s  life  off 
froffi  nature's  life.  Civilized  man  as  he  exists 
today,  in  his  present  stage  of  mental  development, 
may  be  defined  as  nature's  unruly  independent 
child,  who,  having  thrown  off  the  instinctive  stage 
of  babyhood,  thinks,  because  he  has  learnt  to 
stand  alone,  and  feed  himself,  that  his  reason  is 
greater  than  his  mother's  wisdom.  All  nature's 
realm  is  now  for  his  interests,  all  her  creatures 
are  to  serve  his  purposes,  for  use  and  food,  all 
exist  for  him  to  spoil,  slay,  maim,  extirpate — just 
as  he  pleases.  This  brutal  callousness  to  the 
value  and  beauty  of  life  other  than  his  own  (and 
he  does  not  scruple  to  hunt  out  of  existence  the 
inferior  races  of  man)  is  in  fact  an  inherited  in- 
stinct of  those  days — not  long  back,  and  indeed 
hardly  past  yet — of  stern  necessity,  when  every 

[30] 


HUDSON'S    "NATURE    BOOKS" 

'hour  was  a  struggle  for  bare  existence.  Nature 
herself  has  implanted  in  man,  as  in  all  her  crea- 
tures, this  imperious  instinct  for  conquest,  nature 
herself  who  in  all  ranks  of  creation  is  full  of  intes- 
tine wars,  with  her  great  law  of  the  strong  species 
preying  on  the  weak.  But  man  having  gained 
the  mastery  over  all  other  of  earth's  creatures, 
man  having  gained  the  supreme  dictatorship  by 
the  superior  force  and  subtlety  of  his  mind,  will 
never  be  able  to  supplant  nature's  laws,  and  put 
himself  to  reign  in  his  mother's  stead.  On  the 
contrary,  as  the  struggle  for  bare  subsistence  be- 
comes less  and  less  intense,  he  rises  higher  and 
higher,  by  understanding  her  laws,  by  studying 
and  admiring  her  miracles.  And  as  his  mind  de- 
velops, Earth's  teeming  fecundity  of  living 
things,  each  gloriously  fashioned  and  framed,  be- 
comes less  and  less  a  mere  arena  with  man  enter- 
ing as  their  bodily  conqueror,  to  spoil  and  slay. 
The  great  law  of  conquest  is  applied  more  and 
more  to  mental  spheres,  where  man,  by  his  cre- 
ative intelligence,  can  contemplate  nature's  life 
as  the  supreme,  inexhaustible  spectacle;  and  in 
losing  himself  in  contemplation  of  the  eternal 
ocean  of  the  Universe  flowing  round  him,  man 
enters  into  nature,  and  becomes  one  with  her 
more  absolutely  than  in  his  earlier  stage  of  prey- 

[31] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

ing  on  and  slaughtering  all  other  of  her  creatures. 
Now  the  force  and  fascination  of  Mr.  Hudson's 
vision  of  Life,  as  we  have  said,  is  that  he  reveals 
.to  us  more  than  any  modern  writer  man's  true 
spiritual  relation  to  the  vast  world  of  created 
sentient  things  in  earth  and  sky,  that  free  life  of 
wild  nature  whose  beauty  cannot  yet  content  our 
souls,  but  we  must  harass,  mutilate,  and  exter- 
minate them,  or  scientifically  catalogue  and  "col- 
lect." Everybody  must  have  felt  at  some  time 
or  other  in  his  heart  stir  a  vague  faint  feeling  of 
love  or  struggling  pity  for  some  poor  "brute 
beast,"  or  captive  bird  fluttering  at  its  cage's  bars. 
And  it  is  by  the  force  of  this  mysterious  love,  by 
the  intensity  of  the  feeling  with  which  he  enters 
spiritually  into  communion  with  wild  nature's 
life,  that  in  Mr.  Hudson's  wrathful  pleading 
against  man's  shortsighted  brutality  we  hear  the 
voices  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  people  scat- 
tered throughout  the  earth  who,  like  him,  also 
love  and  rejoice  in  the  wild  creatures'  life.  He 
is  their  spokesman.  And  so  it  is  that  it  is  not  sur- 
prising that  Mr.  Hudson,  who,  flinging  off  the 
soiled  dust  of  our  human  thoroughfares,  and  go- 
ing into  nature's  wilderness  to  escape  the  sight  of 
the  "pale  civilized  faces,"  with  the  mean  round  of 
petty  human  interests  of  their  "artificial  indoor 

[32] 


HUDSON'S    "NATURE    BOOKS" 

lives,"  it  is  not  surprising  that  Mr.  Hudson,  who 
has  written  the  finest  invective  ever  penned 
against  the  yearly  carnival  of  bird-slaughter,  is 
the  same  man  who  has  given  us  one  of  the  tender- 
est  and  deepest  and  saddest  stories  of  human  life^ 
that  our  readers  can  name.  It  is  not  surprising 
either  that  in  his  nature  books,  taken  together, 
there  are  hundreds  of  passages  in  which  man's  life 
is  presented  to  us  as  a  beautiful  thing  when  seen 
as  a  part  of  nature^  with  all  its  strong  ties,  visible 
and  invisible,  to  the  earth  that  sustains  and  nur- 
tures him,  and  to  the  firmament  in  which  he  draws 
his  breath.  Even  as  Mr.  Hudson  refuses  to  be- 
lieve that  the  birds  of  the  air  can  be  in  truth 
"scientifically"  studied  by  shutting  them  up  in 
boxes,  or  by  dissecting  them  in  class-rooms,  or  by 
stuffing  their  dead  bodies,  and  arranging  them 
on  museum  shelves,  and  holds  that  if  you  wish  to 
comprehend  what  the  lark's  life  is  you  must  go 
into  the  fields  and  hear  his  ecstatic  song  of 
the  sun,  the  driving  winds,  and  the  rustling  grass; 
so  does  he  take  no  pleasure  in  seeing  man  in  that 
predominant,  aspect  which  the  modern  world 
conspires  to  place  him  in — the  aspect  of  a  stuffy 
town   animal,    leading  an   unnaturally   artificial 

If/     Ombu,     in     "Tales     of     the     Pampas"     (New     York: 
Knopf,   1916.) 

[33] 


FRIDAY    NIGHT 

gaslight  existence.  Man  of  course  can  be  exam- 
ined truthfully  from  a  thousand  angles  of  vision. 
You  can,  for  example,  study  the  labourer  simply 
as  he  appears  in  the  tap-room,  and  you  can  study 
him  at  his  work  in  the  fields.  The  finer,  however, 
is  the  writer's  field  of  vision  the  more  does  his 
picture  of  life  suggest  not  merely  the  visible  limi- 
tations of  its  immediate  phase,  but  its  permanent 
relations  with  the  great  background  of  human  life, 
into  which  it  is  continually  being  dissolved,  and^ 
out  of  which  it  is  continually  emerging  reshaped. 
It  has  been  reserved  for  "modern  thought,"  tem- 
porarily intoxicated  by  its  hasty  draught  of  "sci- 
entific discoveries,"  to  fail  (where  no  age  has  ever 
failed  before)  to  lay  stress  on  man's  spiritual  de- 
pendence on  the  world  of  nature  round  him.  The 
great  minds,  the  great  poets,  philosophers,  and  re- 
ligious teachers  of  all  ages,  from  Homer  to  Virgil, 
from  Shakespeare  to  Turgenev,  from  the  Hebrew 
prophets  to  Buddha,  have  never  shared  in  this 
materialistic  trick  of  human  vision,  of  seeing 
man  out  of  perspective.  Now  owing  to  Science's 
materialistic  discoveries  obscuring  our  field  of 
spiritual  vision,  nearly  every  writer  today  is,  as  it 
were,  trying  to  see  nature's  life,  ivithout  the  me- 
dium of  human  emotion,  and  in  vacuo^  as  it  were. 
It  is  Mr.  Hudson's  distinction  to  have  shown  by 

[34] 


HUDSON'S    "NATURE    BOOKS" 

his  superior  penetration  into  wild  nature's  life 
that  though  the  material  gain  to  Physical  Science 
of  studying  nature  in  vacuo  may  be  great,  the 
supreme  inexhaustible  field  that  lies  before  man 
lies  outside  the  narrow  province  of  pure  reason, 
lies  outside  his  utilitarian  interests,  lies  in  his  own 
spiritual  absorption  in  the  vast  drama  of  nature's 
myriad  activities.  Man,  in  short,  Mr.  Hudson 
shows  us,  can  only  enter  into  the  vast  world  of  her 
myriad  sentient  life  by  employing  all  the  old 
emotional  tools — his  sense  of  mystery,  love  of 
beauty,  poetic  imagination,  and  human  love — 
to  supplement  and  vivify  the  "impassive"  truths 
of  Science.  So  shall  he  develop  his  innate  Mer- 
lin power  of  sympathetic  feeling,  and  comprehend 
better  and  better  that  mysterious  essence  or  spirit 
of  life  which  is  itself  inseparable  from  feeling. 
Thus  man  may  slowly  become  one  in  thought 
with  nature,  and  more  and  more  shall  he  compre- 
hend the  beauty  of  the  eternal  ocean  of  life  flow- 
ing around  him.' 

1903 


[35] 


TCHEHOV     AND     HIS     ART 


TCHEHOV  AND  HIS  ART 

(a)  a  note  on  tchehov's  art^ 

TCHEHOV S  range  of  subject,  scene  and  sit- 
uation is  so  varied  that  it  will  be  conven- 
ient    here     to     classify     his     Tales     as 
follows : — 

(a)  The  short  humorous  sketches,  of  which  the  au- 
thor wrote  many  hundreds,  chiefly  in  early  life. 

(b)  Stories  of  the  life  of  the  town — "Intelligentsia"  ; 
family  and  domestic  pieces,  of  which  "The  Duel" 
and  "Three  Years" — a  study  of  Moscow  atmos- 
phere and  environment — are  the  longest. 

(c)  Stories  of  provincial  life,  in  which  a  great  variety 
of  types — landowners,  officials,  doctors,  clergy, 
school-teachers,  merchants,  innkeepers,  etc. — 
appear. 

(d)  Stories  of  peasant  life — settled  types. 

(e)  Stories  of  unconventional  and  lawless  types — rov- 
ing characters. 

1  Introduction    to    "The    Tales    of    Tchehov."     Translated   by 
Constance    Garnett.     Vol.    r.     The   Macmillan   Co.,   1915. 

[39] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

(f)    Psychological  studies,  such  as  "The  Black  Monk," 
"Ward  No.  6." 

One  must  recall  here,  also,  Tchehov's  plays,  his 
short  farces,  and  his  descriptive  account  of  Sagha— ^ 
lien  life. 

By  his  supremacy  as  a  writer  of  short  stories, 
Tchehov  has  been  termed  the  Russian  Maupas- 
sant, and  there,  are  indeed,  several  vital  resem- 
blances between  the  outlook  of  the  French  and  the 
Russian  master.  The  art  of  both  these  unflinching 
realists,  in  its  exploration  of  human  motives,  is 
imbued  with  a  searching  passion  for  truths  and  a 
poet's  sensitiveness  to  beauty.  But  whereas  Mau- 
passant's mental  atmosphere  is  clear,  keen,  and 
strong,  with  a  touch  of  a  hard,  cold  mind,  Tche- 
hov's is  born  of  a  softer,  warmer,  kindlier  earth. 
Had  Maupassant  written  "The  Darling,"  he 
would  have  been  less  patient  with  Olenka's  lack 
of  brains,  more  cynical  over  her  forgetfulness  of 
her  first  and  second  husbands.  And  a  French 
Olenka  would,  in  fact,  have  been  less  naive  than 
the  Russian  woman,  and  in  that  respect  more  open 
to  criticism. 

The  temperamental  difference  between  the  Nor- 
man and  the  Russian,  in  fact,  reflects  the  differ- 
ences between  their  traditions  and  the  spiritual 

[40] 


TCHEHOV   AND    HIS   ART 

valuations  of  their  national  cultures.  As  an  illus- 
tration we  may  cite  Tchehov's  handling  of  those 
odious  women,  Ariadne  and  the  rapacious  wife  in 
"The  Helpmate."  It  is  characteristic  that  Tche- 
hov  shows  them  to  us  through  the  eyes  of  a  kindly, 
good-natured  type  of  man  whose  judgment,  how- 
ever exasperated,  does  not  crystallize  into  hardness 
or  bitterness.  Tchehov,  though  often  melan- 
choly, is  rarely  cynical ;  he  looks  at  human  nature 
with  the  charitable  eye  of  the  wise  doctor  who  has 
learnt  from  experience  that  people  cannot  be  other 
than  what  they  are.  It  is  his  profundity  of  accep- 
tation that  blends  with  quiet  humour  and  tender- 
ness to  make  his  mental  atmosphere  one  of  subtle 
emotional  receptivity.  In  his  art  there  is  always 
this  tinge  of  cool,  scientific  passivity  blending  with 
the  sensitiveness  of  a  sweet,  responsive  nature. 
Remark  that  Tchehov,  unlike  Dostoevsky,  rarely 
identifies  himself  with  his  sinners  and  sufferers, 
but  he  stands  close  to  all  his  characters,  watching 
them  quietly  and  registering  their  circumstances 
and  feelings  with  such  finality  that  to  pass  judg- 
ment on  them  appears  supererogatory.  Thus,  in 
"The  Two  Volodyas,"  when  the  neurotic  Sofya 
Lvovna  abandons  herself  to  the  dissipated  Vladi- 
mir Mihailitch  we  realize  that  she  is  preparing  for 
herself  fresh  wretchedness,  and  whatever  she  may 

[41] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

do,  she  is  bound  to  go  on  paying  the  price  for  her 
folly  in  marrying  Colonel  Jagitch,  the  elderly 
handsome  lady-killer.  It  is  equally  useless  to 
pass  judgment  on  the  two  Volodyas,  who,  be- 
tween them,  having  helped  to  ruin  Sofya  Lvov- 
na's  life,  will  go  on  shrugging  their  shoulders  at 
her,  and  following  their  life  of  bored,  worldly 
pleasure.  This  is  life,  and  it  is  the  woman 
who  pays. 

Readers  have  complained  of  Tchehov's  "grey- 
ness,"  but  such  a  story  as  "The  Two  Volodyas" 
cannot  with  justice  be  styled  grey  any  more  than 
can  an  etching  by  a  master,  whose  range  of  the 
subtlest  gradations  of  tone,  in  the  chiaroscuro, 
stands  in  place  of  a  fine  colour  scheme.  Just  as 
the  colour  of  a  flower  is  not  a  solid  pigment,  but 
is  the  result  of  the  play  of  light  on  the  broken  sur- 
face of  its  innumerable  cells,  so  Tchehov's  art, 
however  tragic  or  melancholy  may  be  the  life  of 
his  characters,  produces  the  effect  of  living  colour 
by  the  shifting  play  of  human  feelings.  Note, 
for  example,  how  the  "depressing,"  squalid  atmos- 
phere of  "Anyuta"  is  broken  up  by  the  artist's 
rapid  inflections  of  feeling.  Again,  'A  Trous- 
seau" and  "Talent"  offer  us  fine  examples  of 
Tchehov's  skill  in  conveying  the  essence  of  a  sit- 
utation,  and  of  people's  outlooks,  by  striking  a 

[42] 


TCHEHOV    AND    HIS    ART 

few  notes  in  the  scale  of  their  varying  moods. 
Further,  remark  how  from  the  disharmony  be- 
tween people's  moods  and  circumstances  springs 
the  peculiar,  subtle  sense  Tchehov  conveys  of 
life's  ironic  pattern  of  time  and  chance  playing 
cat  and  mouse  with  people's  happiness.  Compare 
the  opening  pages,  in  "Three  Years,"  of  Laptev's 
passion  for  Yulia  with  the  closing  scene  where 
she  is  waiting  to  tell  him  how  dear  he  is  to  her, 
while  he  himself  finds  no  response  in  his  heart, 
and  "cautiously  removes  her  hand  from  his  neck.'' 
But  Tchehov  is  too  subtle,  too  delicate  an  artist 
to  emphasize  this  note  in  his  impressionistic  pic- 
ture of  life's  teeming  freshness  and  fulness;  so  he 
touches  in  life's  elusivenesjB  and  promise  in  the 
description  of  how  "Yartsev  kept  smiling  at  Yu- 
lia and  her  beautiful  neck  with  a  sort  of  joyous 
shyness."'  Here  is  love's  new  birth  indicated 
with  exquisite  delicacy.  And  here,  as  in  the 
little  scene  preceding  where  Laptev  stands 
in  the  moonlit  yard,  a  mysterious  sense  of 
the  intricacy  of  the  mesh  of  our  lives  steals 
over  us.  It  is  the  poet's  special  sense  for  con- 
veying an  atmosphere,  the  same  that  we  find  in 
his  plays,  such  as  "The  Cherry  Orchard" —  a  deli- 
cate responsiveness  to  the  spectacle  of  life's  cease- 
less intricacy.     We  get  this  in  the  account  of  the 

[43] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

dying  woman  Nina  Fyodorovna's  relations  with 
her  husband,  the  incorrigible  Panaurov,  and  in  Po- 
lina  Nikolevna's  inscrutable  changes  of  feeling  to- 
wards Laptev.  With  what  beautifully,  slight, 
firm  strokes  these  last  two  characters  are  touched 
in.  If  we  stress  here  this  side  of  Tchehov's  talent 
— rhow  a  feeling  of  the  inevitableness  of  things 
seems  to  float  in  the  atmosphere  of  his  finest 
sketches  and  stories — it  is  to  point  out  how  his 
flexible  and  transparent  method  reproduces  the 
pulse  and  beat  of  life,  its  pressure,  its  fluidity,  its 
momentum,  its  rhythm  and  change,  with  astonish- 
ing sureness  and  ease.  But  any  appreciation  of 
Tchehov's  talent  is  inevitably  partial,  since  its 
leading  character'istic  is  its  surpassing  variety. 
This,  the  first  volume  of  a  new  translation  of  his 
Tales,  presents  a  few  aspects  of  Tchehov's  incom- 
parable gift.  All  who  want  to  know  modern  Rus- 
sia, especially  the  life  of  the  educated  class,  must 
read  Tchehov. 

1915 

(b)  tchehov's  traditions 

Of  English  appreciations  of  Tchehov  Mr.  Mid- 
dleton  Murry's  is  alike  the  most  serious  and  the 
most  illuminating.     His  eloquent  pages  in  "As- 

[44] 


TCHEHOV   AND    HIS    ART 

pects  of  Literature"  ^  testify  that  he  among  the 
younger  school  of  critics  has  understood  best  the 
quality  of  Tchehov's  genuis  and  the  beauty  of  his 
character.  Moreover  he  it  is  who  directed  atten- 
tion to  the  modernity  of  Tchehov's  attitude, 
rightly  declaring  that  he  is  "a  good  many  phases 
in  advance  of  all  that  is  habitually  described  as 
modern  in  literature."  It  is  therefore  in  no  sense 
of  fault-finding  if  I  try  here  to  enlarge  our  vistas 
of  the  subject  and  supplement  some  of  Mr.  Mur- 
ry's  critical  remarks  by  other  comments.  Mr. 
Murry  in  his  articles  has  discussed  (a)  Tchehov's 
life  and  (b)  Tchehov's  art.  Let  me  quote  some 
of  his  remarks  on  Tchehov  the  man : — 

He  had  been  saturated  in  all  the  disillusions  which  we 
regard  as  particularly  our  own,  and  every  quality  which 
is  distinctive  of  the  epoch  of  consciousness  in  which  we 
are  living  now  is  reflected  in  him — and  yet,  miracle  of 
miracles,  he  was  a  great  artist.  He  did  not  rub  his 
cheeks  to  produce  a  spurious  colour  of  health ;  he  did  not 
profess  beliefs  he  could  not  maintain ;  he  did  not  seek  a 
reputation  for  universal  wisdom,  or  indulge  himself  in 
self-gratifying  dreams  of  a  millenium  which  he  alone 
had  the  ability  to  control.  He  was  and  wanted  to  be 
nothing  in  particular,  and  yet,  as  we  read  these  letters 

1  Aspects  of  Literature.  By  J.  Middleton  Murry.  (Collins 
Sons  and   Co.,   1920.) 

[45] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

of  his,  we  feel  gradually  form  within  ourselves  the  con- 
viction that  he  was  a  hero — more  than  that,  the  hero  of 
our  time.  .  .  . 

In  every  conjecture  of  his  life  that  we  can  trace  in  his 
letters  he  behaved  squarely  by  himself,  and  since  he  is 
our  great  examplar,  by  us.  He  refused  to  march  under 
any  political  banner — a  thing  let  it  be  remembered  of  al- 
most inconceivable  courage  in  his  country ;  he  submitted 
to  savagely  hostile  attacks  for  his  political  indifference ; 
yet  he  spent  more  of  his  life  and  energy  in  doing  active 
good  to  his  neighbours  than  all  the  high-souled  professors 
of  liberalism  and  social  reform.  He  undertook  an  al- 
most superhuman  journey  to  Sahalin  in  1890  to  investi- 
gate the  conditions  of  the  prisoners  there,  in  1892  he 
spent  the  best  part  of  a  year  as  a  doctor  devising  pre- 
ventive measures  against  the  cholera  in  the  country  dis- 
trict where  he  lived,  and,  although  he  had  no  time  for  the 
writing  on  which  his  living  depended,  he  refused  the 
government  pay  in  order  to  preserve  his  own  independ- 
ence of  action ;  in  another  year  he  was  the  leading  spirit 
in  organizing  measures  of  famine  relief  about  Nizhni- 
Novgorod.  From  his  childhood  to  his  death,  moreover, 
he  was  the  sole  support  of  his  family.  Measured  by  the 
standards  of  Christian  morality,  Tchehov  was  wholly  a 
saint.     His    self-devotion    was    boundless.  .  .  . 

It  seems  a  simple  discipline,  this  moral  and  intellectual 
honesty  of  Tchehov's,  yet  in  these  days  of  conceit  and 
coterie  his  letters  strike  us  as  more  than  strange.  One 
predominant  impression  remains ;  it  is  that  of  Tchehov's 
candour  of  soul.  Somehow  he  has  achieved  with  open 
eyes    the    mystery    of   pureness    of   heart;    and    in    that, 

[46] 


TCHEHOV   AND    HIS    ART 

though  we  dare  not  analyse  it  further  lies  the  secret  of 
his  greatness  as  a  writer  and  of  his  present  importance  to 
ourselves. 

This  is  an  admirable  tribute  to  Tchehov,  for 
which  all  his  admirers  must  be  grateful,  but  it 
presents  Tchehov  too  much  as  a  phenomenon. 
Tchehov  must  be  seen  in  relation  to  Russian  cul- 
ture, if  his  English  readers  are  not  to  see  him  out 
of  focus.  Candour  of  soul  is  common  in  Russian 
literature.  It  was  the  spiritual  tradition  of  Tche- 
hov's  great  predecessors  no  less  than  intellectual 
sincerity.  Of  course  in  Russia,  as  elsewhere,  van- 
ity and  stupidity,  conceit  and  pretentiousness  are 
qualities  ever  springing  up  like  tares  in  the  corn; 
but  for  the  two  generations  before  Tchehov,  Rus- 
sian genius  had  evolved  and  responded  to  the  twin 
ideals  of  remorseless  sincerity  and  large  warm- 
hearted humanity.  From  Pushkin  (1799-1837) 
to  Tchehov  (1860-1904)  we  find  these  twin 
ideals  animating  Gogol,  Byelinsky,  Aksakov, 
Grigorevitch,  Turgenev,  Dostoevsky,  Tolstoy, 
Shtchedrin,  Ertel,  Korolenko,  Garschin  and 
Gorky.  These  ideals  are  to  be  found  underlying 
the  conversations  and  analyses  of  character  in  the 
works  of  the  leading  writers.  In  Turgenev's 
novels    especially,    we    find    "candour    of    soul" 

[47] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

and  "pureness  of  heart"  in  constant  evidence,  no 
less  than  were  respect  for  human  personality, 
"dread  of  lying  and  of  vanity,"  "development  of 
aesthetic  feeling,"  "the  ennoblement  of  the  sexual 
instinct,"  insisted  upon  as  the  chief  constituents 
of  the  "true  culture"  which  Tchehov  emphasizes 
in  his  letter  to  his  brother  Nikolay.  And  "the 
new  humanity"  whidh  Mr.  Murry  says  Tchehov 
"set  himself  to  achieve"  was  nothing  new  to  Rus- 
sian contemporary  thought,  though  Mr.  Murry 
is  perfectly  right  in  stressing  the  "modernity"  of 
his  attitude.  In  restating  and  emphasizing  this 
creed  of  humanism  Tchehov  proved  himself  a 
true  spiritual  descendant  of  his  great  literary 
fore-runners,  and  their  representative  successor  in 
the  nineties. 

Secondly  Mr.  Murry  has  not  perhaps  quite 
grasped  that  among  the  salt  of  Tchehov's  own  gen- 
eration there  were  thousands  of  workers  in  science, 
art  and  the  liberal  professions — school-teachers, 
professors,  doctors,  students,  and  land-owners — 
who  also  had  "been  saturated  in  all  the  disillu- 
sions," who,  like  him,  "did  not  march  under  any 
political  banner"  but  did  their  work  with  "pure- 
ness  of  heart,"  with  complete  "moral  and  intellec- 
tual honesty."  It  was  to  them  that  Tchehov  ap- 
pealed, it  was  they  that  Tchehov  represented  both 

[48] 


TCHEHOV    AND    HIS    ART 

in  their  aspirations  and  their  disillusionment  with 
politics.  The  eighties  and  early  nineties  which 
le(ft  their  imprint  on  Tchehov's  youth  and  early 
manhood  were  a  time  of  discouragement  and  gen- 
eral disbelief  in  revolutionary  activity.  The  Ni- 
hilist movement  of  the  previous  decade  had  collap- 
sed; political  reaction  was  in  full  swing."  Kro- 
potkin  indeed  ^  singles  out  Tchehov  as  pre-emi- 
nently the  painter  of  "the  disillusioned  intellec- 
tuals" of  the  eighties  and  early  nineties  and  of  the 
"breakdown  of  the  Intelligentsia."  "In  the  fifties," 
he  says,  "the  intellectuals  had  at  least  full  hope  in 
their  forces — now  they  had  lost  even  these  hopes." 
Kropotkin,  a  revolutionary  propagandist  himself, 
criticizes  Tchehov  in  a  partisan  spirit,  but  it  is 
true  that  in  Tchehov's  four  plays,  "Ivanov,"  "Un- 
cle Vanya,"  "The  Three  Sisters,"  "The  Cherry 
Orchard,"  the  moral  collapse  of  the  Intelligentsia 
is  threatening,  and  that  this  was  one  of  the  por- 
tents Iheralding  the  crash  of  the  regime  a  genera- 
tion later.  It  is  true  also,  as  Mr.  Murry  states, 
that  "Tchehov  submitted  to  savagely  hostile  at- 
tacks for  his  political  indifference,"  but  it  is  an 
exaggeration  to  style  his  action  "an  act  of  almost 
inconceivable  courage"  in  the  Russia  of  the  nine- 

-  See    Tolstoy's    "Letter    to    the    Liberals." 

^"Ideals    and    Realities    in    Russian    Literature,"   pp.    313-14. 

[49] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

ties,  where  the  periodical  press  had  long  been 
saturated  with  polemical  attacks  on  this  writer 
and  that  for  his  "reactionary"  or  "revolutionary" 
or  "indifferent"  attitude.  Tchehov's  contempor- 
aries, Ertel  and  Garschin  were  equally  indifferent 
to  politics.  Turgenev  himself,  for  the  last  twenty 
years  of  his  life  had  lived  in  a  storm  of  such  at- 
tacks. Yet  as  Mr.  Murry  says  Tchehov  was  a 
"saint"  and  a  "hero"  and  an  example  to  his  con- 
temporaries, though  this  does  not  make  him  a 
phenomenon  in  Russian  eyes.  His  unselfishness 
and  purity  of  spirit,  his  radiant  character,  and  de- 
votion to  his  work,  his  struggle  against  human 
stupidity  and  contemporary  lies,  unite  with  his 
genius  and  his  modesty  to  make  him  the  most 
delightful  figure  of  his  "disillusioned"  generation. 

TCHEHOv's    "modernity" 

"Anton  Tchehov,  born  in  i860  at  Taganrog, 
was  the  son  of  an  emancipated  serf.  His 
father  was  a  very  talented  man,  active  in 
all  the  affairs  of  the  town,  devoted  to  church  sing- 
ing and  violin  playing.  His  mother  was  the 
daughter  of  a  cloth  merchant  of  fairly  good  educa- 
tion, a  highly  spiritual  woman,  who  instilled  into 
her  children  a  hatred  of  brutality,  and  a  feeling  of 
regard  for  all  who  were  in  an  inferior  position, 

[so] 


TCHEHOV   AND   HIS   ART 

and  for  birds  and  animals.  As  a  boy  Anton  'was 
always  writing  stories.'  By  the  age  of  twenty  he 
had  seen  a  variety  of  life,  earning  his  living  from 
the  age  of  sixteen,  at  Taganrog,  and  paying  for 
his  education  at  the  high  school,  practising  music, 
fond  of  the  theatre,  flirting  with  the  high-school 
girls,  making  country  excursions  and  learning  to 
ride  and  shoot.  In  1879  he  joined  his  family  at 
Moscow.  Tt  was  the  absolute  necessity  of  earn- 
ing money  to  pay  for  his  fees  at  the  University 
and  to  help  support  the  household  that  forced  An- 
ton to  write,'  says  his  biographer.  At  Voskre- 
sensk,  where  his  brother  was  master  of  the  parish 
school,  Tchehov  gained  an  insight  into  the  life  of 
teachers,  landowners,  peasants  and  military  so- 
ciety. A  little  later,  having  trained  for  a  medical 
career,  he  took  a  job  as  a  doctor's  assistant,  at 
Zvenigorod,  where  he  was  introduced  to  the  society 
of  literary  and  artistic  people."  ^ 

Thus  at  the  age  of  twenty-five  Tchehov  had  in- 
tersected Russian  provincial  life  at  many  angles, 
had  made  many  friends  by  the  charm  of  his  lively 
and  sweet  nature,  and  could  have  had,  in  fact,  no 
better  preparation  for  his  delineation  of  the  life 
of  contemporary  Russia.     His  art,  naturally,  did 

1  See    the    "Biographical    Sketch"    in    "Letters    of    Tchehov." 
Translated  by  Constance  Garnett,    (The  Macmillan  Co.,   1920.) 

[51] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

not  reach  perfection  all  at  once.  Many  of  his 
early  humorous  sketches  are  superficial  and  crude, 
and  when  his  Tales  were  collected  those  excluded 
would  fill  four  volumes.  Again,  he  did  not  learn 
at  once  to  suppress  didactic  touches,  and  blend  his 
comments  artistically  with  his  characters'.  Al- 
ways modest,  he  did  not  take  his  sketches  seriously 
till  Grigorevitch  urged  him  to  do  so.  But  by 
tempiCrament,  training,  experience  and  outlook 
Tchehov  became  the  literary  incarnation  of  the 
rich  emotional  consciousness  of  the  Russian  nature, 
of  its  fluid  responsiveness  of  feeling.  And  not  only 
so,  but  Tchehov  is  the  ''last  word"  in  the  modern 
criticism  of  life.  As  Mr.  Murry  has  well  put  it, 
''Today  we  begin  to  perceive  how  intimately 
Tchehov  belongs  to  us;  tomorrow  we  may  feel 
how  infinitely  he  is  in  advance  of  us.^  Wherein  is 
he  so  "modern'"?  It  was  the  conjunction  of  his 
peculiarly  independent  flexibility  of  mind  with 
his  keen  scientific  outlook  ^  that  equipped  him  for 
seizing  and  judging  modern  life  from  fresh  angles. 
While  representative  of  the  changing  horizons  and 

^  "Aspects  of  Literature,"   p.  84. 

3  "Medicine  is  my  lawful  wife  and  literature  is  my  mistress. 
When  I  get  tired  of  one  I  spend  the  night  at  the  other's.  It 
is  rather  disorderly,  but  not  so  dull,  and  besides  neither  of  them 
loses  anything  from  my  infidelity."     "Letters  of  Tchehov"  p.  99. 

[52] 


TCHEHOV   AND   HIS   ART 

complexity  of  the  social  organism  of  the  new 
Russia  (1885-1904)  Tchehov's  vision  fused  the 
detached  impartial  attitude  of  the  modern  scien- 
tist with  the  deep  humanism,  the  psychological 
insight,  the  caressing  tenderness  and  the  gay  hu- 
mour of  his  sensitive  temperament.  It  would  be 
wrong  to  exaggerate  this  "scientific"  strain  in 
Tchehov's  art,  but  it  is  sublimated  in  the  soft, 
rich  depths  of  his  aesthetic  consciousness,  and  is 
constantly  inspiring  or  reinforcing  his  critical  at- 
titude. For  example,  "The  Duel"  turns  on  the 
antipathy  felt  by  Van  Koren  the  zoologist,  a 
man  of  unbending  character,  whose  life  runs  on 
the  straight  track  of  scientific  ideas,  for  Laevsky 
the  neurasthenic  young  official,  preoccupied  with 
his  dissolute  amours.  The  antagonism  between  the 
two  men  ends  in  a  stupid  duel.  But  Van  Koren, 
whose  clear,  cold  reasoning  about  the  moral 
law,  sexual  morals  and  the  extinction  of  the  weak 
is  theoretically  sound,  is  as  much  blinded  by  his 
over-logical  convictions  as  Laevsky  is  obsessed  by 
his  dissolute  instincts.  The  complexity  of  life  is 
shown  by  the  sequel,  when  Van  Koren's  failure  to 
kill  Laevsky  is  the  instrument  of  the  latter's  regen- 
eration. "If  one  is  not  mistaken  in  the  main  one 
is  mistaken  in  details,"  is  Tchehov's  moral,  "no- 
bodv  knows  the  real  truth."     And  this  sceptical, 

[53] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

scientific  conscience  speaks  in  "The  Duel"  to  rein- 
force Tchehov's  characteristically  Russian  insist- 
ence on  human  charity.  Tchehov  indeed  is  in 
advance  of  us  by  the  way  in  which  his  scientific 
knowledge  corrects  or  sharpens  ordinary  insight 
and  his  humanity  corrects  scientific  narrowness.  * 
In  England,  America  and  Europe  generally  scien- 
tific men  are  apt  to  be  cribbed,  cabined  and  con- 
fined by  their  work  of  specializing.  Their  scien- 
tific horizon  stops  short  of  the  humanities.  But 
with  Tchehov  science  broadens  the  humanities, 
and  both  reconcile  themselves  with  art.  Speak- 
ing of  a  French  story,  Tchehov  says  significantly : 
"I  thought  at  the  time  that  an  artist's  instinct  may 
sometimes  be  worth  the  brains  of  a  scientist,  that 
both  have  the  same  purpose,  the  same  nature,  and 
that  perhaps  in  time  as  their  methods  become  per- 

*  "I  have  no  doubt  that  the  study  of  medicine  has  had  an 
important  influence  on  my  literary  work;  it  has  considerably 
enlarged  the  sphere  of  my  observation,  has  enriched  me  with 
knowledge  the  true  value  of  which  for  me  as  a  writer  can 
only  be  understood  by  one  who  is  himself  a  doctor.  It  has 
also  had  a  guiding  influence;  and  it  is  probably  due  to  my  close 
association  with  medicine  that  I  have  succeeded  in  avoiding 
many  mistakes. 

"Familiarity  with  the  natural  sciences  and  with  scientific 
method  has  always  kept  me  on  my  guard,  and  I  have  always 
tried  where  it  was  possible  to  be  consistent  with  the  facts  of 
science,  where  it  was  impossible  I  have  preferred  not  to  write 
at   all."       "Letters   of  Tchehov"  p.  369. 

[54] 


TCHEHOV   AND    HIS   ART 

feet  they  are  destined  to  become  one  vast  prodi- 
gious force,  which  now  is  difficult  to  imagine."  ^ 
Another  good  example  of  this  fusion  of  artistic 
and  scientific  insight  is  to  be  found  in  that  bril- 
liant and  fascinating  social  picture  "The  Party," 
a  story  which  for  atmospheric  truth  and  subtle 
inflections  of  tone  leaves  most  of  contemporary 
art  in  the  shade. 

"The  Party"  is  a  study  of  the  agonizing  strain 
felt  by  a  smiling  hostess,  seven  months  gone 
with  child,  during  the  festivities  at  a  country-house 
party  to  celebrate  her  husband's  name-day.  The 
well-bred  Olga  Mihailovna  would  give  anything 
to  be  able  to  sit  down  and  dream  happily  about 
her  coming  child,  but  she  is  forced  by  her  code  of 
perfect  manners  to  study  each  one  of  her  guests' 
wants,  to  make  conversation,  to  invent  new  amuse- 
ments, to  give  fresh  orders,  to  welcome  late  arri- 
vals; and  the  agonizing  gulf  between  her  outer, 
smiling  attentive  self,  and  her  inner  misery,  is  at 
last  declared  at  the  end  of  the  day,  in  an  emotional 
storm  with  her  husband  and  a  tragic  miscarriage. 
Tchehov's  own  comment  on  the  tale  was  "It  really 
isn't  bad  to  be  a  doctor  and  to  understand  what 
one  is  writing  about.  The  ladies  say  the  des- 
cription of  the  confinement  is  true."   Tchehov's 

5  "Letters  of  Tchehov"  p.  76. 

Iss] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

attitude  to  women  would  need  a  study  to  itself  but 
one  may  note  that  while  no  one  has  yet  equalled 
his  unsparing  dissection  of  the  modern  parasitic 
woman,  his  power  is  sharpened  by  his  physiologi- 
cal insight.  Yet  another  good  example  of  Tche- 
hov's  "modernity"  is  seen  in  "The  Grasshopper," 
"A  Misfortune,"  "lonitch,"  etc.  "The  Doctor's 
Visit,"  an  exposition  of  the  modern  social  muddle, 
as  exemplified  by  the  monotonous,  brutal  life  led 
by  the  factory  workers  and  the  stuffy,  bored  life 
led  by  the  factory  owner's  family,  rich  bourgeois 
whose  wealth  is  an  impediment  to  their  happiness. 
While  the  doctor  thinks  the  whole  factory  system 
a  kind  of  social  disease,  humanly  irrational,  he  is 
very  guarded  in  his  diagnosis.®  The  same  sub- 
ject is  handled  in  richer,  livelier,  freer  aspects,  in 
that  incomparable  story,  "A  Woman's  Kingdom" 
which  in  its  large,  easy,  human  contacts,  gives  us 
foreigners  the  key  to  the  charm  of  Russian  inter- 
course. Here  the  "modernity"  is  implicit  in  the 
complex  web  of  the  involved  relations  of  Capital 
and  Labour,  with  the  large-natured  heroine,  Anna 
Akimovna,  a  girl  of  the  people,  paralyzed  by  her 

^  "As  a  doctor  accustomed  to  judging  correctly  of  chronic 
connplaints,  the  radical  cause  of  which  was  incomprehensible 
and  incurable,  he  looked  upon  factories  as  something  baffling, 
the  cause  of  which  was  obscure  and  not  removable."  "The 
Doctor's  Visit." 

[56] 


TCHEHOV   AND    HIS    ART 

false  position,  between  her  grand  gentlemen 
friends  who  sponge  on  her,  and  the  exploited  work 
people  who  strive  to  cheat  her.  It  is  human 
nature,  but  rebellious  human  nature  caught  in  the 
wheels  of  our  relentless  social  machine.  But 
Tchehov  draws  his  picture  with  such  delicacy  of 
touch  and  subtlety  of  insight,  with  such  gay 
warmth  of  feeling  as  to  make  us  sympathize 
equally  with  the  large-hearted  Anna  who 
"would  give  half  her  life  and  all  her  fortune 
only  to  know  there  was  a  man  upstairs  who  was 
closer  to  her  than  any  one  in  the  world,  that  he 
loved  her  wannly  and  was  missing  her,"  and  with 
the  frivolous,  elderly  dilettante  Lysevitch  who 
assures  her  "It's  essential  for  you;  it's  your 
duty  to  be  frivolous  and  depraved.  Ponder  that, 
my  dear,  ponder  it."  Here  is  the  artist,  trium- 
phant, the  pure  artist  who  answered  his  friend 
Savorin:  "You  abuse  me  for  objectivity,  calling 
it  indifference  to  good  and  evil,  lack  of  ideas  and 
ideals,  and  so  on.  You  would  have  me  when  I 
describe  horse-stealers,"  say:  Stealing  horses  is  an 
evil.  But  that  has  been  known  for  ages,  without 
my  saying  so  .  .  .  it's  my  job  simply  to  show 
what  sort  of  people  they  are  ...  I  must  all 
the  time  speak  and  think  in  their  tone  and  feel 

^  See  "The  Horse-Stealers." 

[57] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

in  their  spirit."  "//'j  my  job  simply  to  show 
what  sort  of  people  they  are" ;  this  is  the  artist's 
aim  which  carries  him  unerringly  into  the  reckless 
soul  of  Sasha  Uskov,^  the  dissipated  young  man 
who  has  forged  a  promissory  note,  and  the  three 
scandalized  uncles  who  sit  in  judgment  on  him; 
and  into  the  soul  of  the  young  girl  Anna,® 
who,  disgusted  with  her  fat,  elderly,  sycophantic 
husband,  plunges  into  a  noisy,  brilliant,  laughing 
life,  with  its  music,  dancers  and  train  of  adorers," 
from  his  Excellency  downwards.  The  artist's 
sympathy  with  all  those  characters,  moral  or  im- 
moral, is  equally  keen,  but  he  is  specially  "mod- 
ern" when  his  experience  and  observation  enable 
him  to  strike  down  to  the  roots  of  "modern  disil- 
lusionment." It  is  the  remorseless  Russian  sin- 
cerity here,  that  in  such  stories  as  "Neighbours" 
enables  Tchehov's  heroes  and  heroines  to  realize 
what  is  the  flaw  in  themselves,  and  why  life  mocks 
their  efforts  at  happiness.  In  general  it  is  the 
combination  of  poor  weak  human  nature  with  the 
misfits  in  environment  and  human  relationships 
that  thwarts  our  happiness.  But  life's  processes 
in  Tchehov  are  very  intricate,  very  elusive  in  pat- 
tern, and  in  "My  Life"  we  have  a  wonderfully 


8  See  "A  Problem." 

^  See  "Anna  on  the  Neck." 


[58] 


TCHEHOV   AND   HIS   ART 

rich  arrangement  of  the  human  muddle  with  all 
its   cares,   sorrows,   brutalities  and  cheats  inter- 
twined with  its  compensating  hopes,  gratifications 
and  fleeting  gains.     We  must  note  here  that  one 
of  the  most  vital  features  of  Techehov's  art,  as 
in  the  case  of  his  great  Russian  predecessors,  is 
that  the  background  of  his  pictures  nearly  always 
breathes  of  the  vast  ocean  of  humanity,  the  peas- 
ant masses,  and  that  this  vision  of  secret  depths 
lifts  the  picture  out  of  the  petty,  restricted  class 
plane  of  fiction  in  Western  Europe.     It  is  so  in 
"My  Life"  which  is  non-European  in  its  social 
atmosphere.     It    is    so    in    "The    Coach-house," 
"The     Schoolmistress,"     "Misery,"     "Sorrow," 
"The   Cattle-Dealers,"    "On  Official   Duty,"    to 
take  only  one  volume  of  Tchehov's  tales. ^°     It  is 
this  background  of  the  vast,  haunting  sea  of  hu- 
man life,  appealing  and  tragic,  from  which  is  born 
the  Russian  breadth  of  vision,  and  the  Russian 
scale  of  emotional  apprehensions,  of  moral  valua- 
tions so  distinct  from  our  own.     But  Tchehov  is 
undoubtedly  nearer  to  and  more  intimate  with  the 
peasant  masses  than  were  Turgenev  and  Tolstoy 
who  came  of  the  race  of  "seigneurs."     Compare, 
for    instance,    "The    Peasants,"    with    Tolstoy's 
"Polikushka,"  a  marvellously  close  study  of  peas- 

10  Volume  IX.     (The  Macmillan  Co.  Edition.) 

[59] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

ant  types,  but  done  with  the  subtle  intellectual 
inflections  of  an  upper-class  mind.  It  is  Tchehov's 
peasant  ancestry  crossed  by  the  familiar  experien- 
ces of  a  hard-worked  country  doctor  that  in  that 
wonderful  creation  "Peasants"  reveals  his  com- 
plete intimacy  with  the  harsh  realities,  the  virtues 
and  the  vices  of  peasant  existence/^  Tchehov's 
attitude  to  peasant  life  and  Russian  provincial 
life  is  generally  that  of  the  observer  and  the  com- 
mentator in  "My  Life,"  "The  New  Villa,"  "In 
the  Ravine."  To  combat  ignorance,  inertia, 
apathy,  savagery,  as  also  the  disease,  drunkenness 
and  vice  of  provincial  Russia,  "we  must  study  and 
study  and  study,  and  we  must  wait  a  bit  with 
our  deep  social  movements;  we  are  not  mature 
enough  for  them  yet,  and  to  tell  the  truth  we  don't 
know  anything  about  them  .  .  .  genuine  social 
movements  arise  when  there  is  knowledge;  and 
the  happiness  of  mankind  in  the  future  lies  only 
in  knowledge."  "There  is  the  same  savagery,  the 
same  uniform  boorishness,  the  same  triviality  as 
five  hundred  years  ago  in  the  people  of  the  towns." 

11  "I  have  peasant  blood  in  my  veins,  and  you  won't  astonish 
me  with  peasant  Viirtues.  From  my  childhood  I  have  believed 
in  progress  and  I  could  not  help  believing  in  it  since  the  dif- 
ference between  the  time  when  I  used  to  be  thrashed  and  when 
they  gave  up  thrashing  me  was  tremendous."  "Letters  of 
Tchehov"   p.   324. 

[60] 


TCHEHOV    AND    HIS    ART 

"We  talked  of  the  fanaticism,  the  coarseness  of 
feeling,  the  insignificance  of  those  respectable 
families.  .  .  .  What  good  had  they  gained  from 
all  that  had  been  said  and  written  hitherto,  if  they 
were  still  possessed  by  the  same  spiritual  darkness 
and  hatred  of  liberty,  as  they  were  a  hundred  and 
three  hundred  years  ago.^^  " 

People  in  the  mass,  everywhere,  are  the  same  in 
all  grades;  at  root  there  is  the  same  stupidity,  cru- 
elty and  dishonesty  at  work  in  the  press  and  the 
politicians  as  in  the  peasants;  and  the  evils  of  hu- 
man life  can  only  be  opposed  by  "love  and  work, 
study  and  will."  The  one  thing  essential  is  that 
we  should  understand,  and  it  is  the  artisfs  job  to 
show  people  what  they  are.  Sympathy  and 
knowledge,  insight  and  charity,  these  are  the  cor- 
ner-stones of  Tchehov's  morality  and  also  of  his 
art.  "I  thought  people  already  knew  that  horse- 
stealing was  wrong;  but  what's  essential  is  to 
show  the  motives,  the  nature,  the  how  and  why  of 
people's  actions"  is  Tchehov's  attitude.  So  in  "In 
the  Ravine,"  the  cruel  triumph  of  the  hard,  sly, 
unscrupulous  Aksinya  over  her  mild,  sweet  sister- 
in-law,  Lipa,  is  recorded  remorselessly.  Aksinya 
gets  all  the  family  power  and  property  into  her 
own  hands,  and  even  turns  her  old  father-in-law 

12  "My  Life"  p.  96,  p.  157- 

[61] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

out  of  doors.  Hers  is  the  success  of  the  harsh, 
strong,  callous  world.  But  what  is  there  left  to 
offset  this  unceasing  triumph  of  human  greed  and 
human  stupidity*?  Only,  in  Tchehov's  view, 
beauty  and  truth.  "And  however  great  was 
wickedness  still  the  night  was  calm  and  beautiful, 
and  everything  on  earth  is  only  waiting  to  be  made 
one  with  truth  and  justice,  even  as  the  moonlight 
is  blended  with  the  night."  It  is  this  element, 
the  element  of  tenderness  and  sweetness  of  under- 
standing that  forms  the  spiritual  background  of 
so  many  of  Tchehov's  Tales,  and  dominates  invis- 
ibly the  coarse  web  of  the  human  struggle  and  the 
petty  network  of  human  egoism.  It  is  seen  to 
perfection  in  that  golden  tale,  steeped  in  hues  of 
dying  sunset,  of  the  death  of  "The  Bishop."  But, 
like  the  colour  in  the  evening  sky,  soon  the  good 
old  man's  virtues  fade  out  of  people's  minds,  in  the 
stir  of  the  appointment  of  the  new  suffragan 
bishop,  "and  no  one  thought  any  more  of  Bishop 
Pyotr,  and  afterwards  he  was  completely  for- 
gotten." It  is  so  in  the  exquisite  "Easter  Eve," 
with  its  magical,  wistful  softness  of  atmosphere, 
where  the  gentle  lay  brother  Jeronim  grieves  for 
his  dead  friend  and  brother  priest  Nikolay,  who 
wrote  the  most  beautiful  canticles,  which  nobody 
in  the  monastery  appreciated.     This  floating  at- 

[62] 


TCHEHOV    AND    HIS    ART 

mosphere  of  charity,  of  tender  humour,  and  so  of 
compassion  for  ordinary  human  nature,  which  can- 
not be  other  than  what  it  is,  envelopes  "A  Night- 
mare," a  pathetic  sketch  of  a  parish  priest's  miser- 
able poverty,  a  sketch  far  superior  both  in  its  pity 
and  its  sense  of  human  equality  to  anything  west- 
ern literature  can  show.  We  meet  it  again  in 
"Dreams,"  the  story  of  a  guilty  little  convict's 
childish  dreams  of  future  happiness  in  Siberia,  be- 
fore he  is  crushed  by  the  stern,  bitter  facts,  a  story 
where  Tchehov's  tender  humour  blends  with  irony 
in  the  strain  peculiar  to  himself.  And  again  in 
"The  Letter,"  that  exquisite  piece  of  humour,  with 
its  caressing  allowances  made  for  both  the  saints 
and  the  sinners.  All  these  tales  show  Tchehov's 
rich,  aesthetic  sensibility  weaving  the  subtle  spell 
of  poetical  harmonies;  as  also  in  "The  Kiss," 
where  the  tedious  round  of  regimental  duties  and 
boring  details  of  the  life  of  Ryaboitch,  the  shy 
and  insignificant  little  officer,  are  steeped  for  a 
few  da}S  in  his  dreamy  haze  of  love  for  the  un- 
known lady  who  has  kissed  him  in  the  dark,  in 
mistake  for  her  lover.  Again,  in  "The  Exile" 
with  its  immense  horizon  of  suffering  and  sorrow 
and  frustrated  hopes,  Tchehov  evokes  in  the  soul 
of  a  sick  desolate  Tartar  these  wistful,  mourn- 
ful harmonies.     It  is  not  merelv  the  individual 

[63] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

life  however,  with  its  broken,  shifting  tangle  of 
yearnings  and  regrets  that  calls  forth  Tchehov's 
wistful  compassionateness,  but  his  recognition  dis- 
entangles the  irony  in  the  very  texture  of  life. 
Time's  revenges  or  the  irony  of  satisfied  desires 
are  treated  in  'Tonitch,"  "A  Teacher  of  Litera- 
ture" and  "The  Lady  with  the  Dog."  Yet  one 
cannot  say  that  Tchehov  himself  is  "disillu- 
sioned." His  sense  of  spiritual  beauty  is  too 
strong,  and  his  depth  of  acceptation  of  life's  pat- 
terns forms,  as  it  were,  an  aura  enveloping  his  sub- 
ject. This  spiritual  aura  hovers  about  it  and  en- 
wraps the  gloomiest,  greyest,  most  sardonic  facts  of 
life:  death  itself  cannot  diminish  it.  Examine 
/  "Gusev,"  a  sketch  of  the  death  of  two  worn  out 
soldiers  on  board  a  steamer,  when  returning  from 
the  East,  a  sketch  that  is  so  "modern"  in  its  all- 
embracing  outlook  and  bold  acceptations  as  to 
shame  nearly  all  the  writers  of  today.  It  is  so 
humanly  broad,  so  tender,  so  infallibly  true  in  its 
spiritual  lightings,  and  it  conveys  the  mystery  of 
nature  and  all  her  transitory  processes  with  sharp 
precision.  In  "Gusev"  there  is  a  sharper  con- 
sciousness of  life's  pulsating  forces,  of  its  ines- 
capable laws,  and  evasive  rhythms  than  in  any 
other  "modern."  Compare  it  with  Tolstoy's 
wonderful    "Three   Deaths"    and   note  how   the 

'[64] 


TCHEHOV   AND    HIS    ART 

tinge  of  "science"  that  faintly  colours  "Gusev" 
marks  the  advance  of  a  new  generation.  The 
fluid,  emotional  receptivity  of  the  Russian  nature, 
which  we  have  noted  above,  is  seen  here,  like  a 
wave,  to  gather  force  in  its  onward  sweep.  "The 
Cattle-Dealers"  is  another  fine  example  of  Tche- 
hov's  sensitive  response  to  every  shade  of  move- 
ment and  feeling  in  a  scene  before  his  eyes.  His 
sensitive,  indulgent  observation  of  the  play  of 
human  nature,  exhibits  the  drovers,  the  railway 
men  and  even  the  unhappy  cattle  penned  in  their 
trucks,  m  a  soft,  zestful  atmosphere.  It  is  a  slice 
at  common  life  delightful  in  its  spontaneous  force, 
while  other  men  pass  by  unseeing  the  charm  of  the 
human  by-play,  here  revealed  to  the  master's  eye. 

Tchehov's  aesthetic  charm  culminates  in  "The  \ 
Steppe,"  a  tale  where  his  tender,  fluid  conscious- 
ness, infinitely  delicate,  mirrors  in  its  pellucid 
depths  the  whole  mirage  of  nature,  variegated, 
wild  and  stern,  elusive  in  its  changing  breath,  in 
the  vast  bosom  of  the  steppes.  This  consummate 
piece  of  art  is  not  "modern,"  save  in  a  few  recur- 
ring notes.  It  is  a  record,  seen  through  the  magic 
glass  of  boyish  memories,  of  the  passing  life  of 
travelling  merchants  and  wayfarers,  journeying  in 
old  world  conditions;  Tchehov  is  here  looking 
backward,  away  from  the  new  currents  and  atmos- 

[65] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

pheres  that  his  vision  caught  and  reflected  from 
the  great  ocean  of  contemporary  life  within  Rus- 
sia's boundaries.  But  when  he  looked  forward 
he  caught  and  reflected  with  equal  sublety,  with 
equal  precision  the  new  vistas  of  our  modern  emo- 
tions and  apprehensions;  the  new  "values"  moral 
and  intellectual  of  our  modern  vision.  He  has 
recorded  his  faith  in  our  progress  in  his  letter  to 
Dagilev  ^^  "Modern  culture  is  only  the  first  begin- 
ning of  work  for  a  great  future,  work  which  will 
perhaps  go  on  for  thousands  of  years  in  order  that 
man  may,  if  only  in  the  remote  future,  come  to 
know  the  truth  of  the  real  God — that  is  not,  I 
conjecture,  by  seeking  it  in  Dostoevsky,  but  by 
clear  knowledge,  as  one  knows  two  and  two  are 
four." 

By  "clear  knowledge,"  that  was  Tchehov's  hope 
for  men,  a  hope  which  in  this  era  of  Europe's  vio- 
lence and  lying,  shines  afar  off  like  a  star. 

13  "Letters  of  Tchehov,"   p.  404. 

1921 


[66] 


IBSEN     AND     THE     ENGLISH 


IBSEN  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

THERE  are  many  interesting  things  in  Bran- 
des'  criticisms  on  Ibsen  :^  an  illuminating 
analysis  of  "The  Master  Builder,"  little 
pictures  of  Norwegian  society,  letters  from  Ibsen 
on  European  politics,  and,  perhaps  the  most  in- 
structive of  all,  a  few  pages  on  the  suffocating 
Philistine  atmosphere  which  lay  like  a  fog  over 
the  Scandinavia  of  the  seventies  and  eighties. 
Such  pages  as  these,  though  fragmentary,  help  the 
English  reader  to  understand  the  environment  of 
frigid  respectabilities  and  humdrum  orthodoxy 
which  Ibsen  defied,  and  later,  turned  to  our 
profit  in  his  dramas  that  criticize  middle  class 
ethics. 

"What  is  really  wanted  is  a  revolution  of  the 
spirit  of  man,''  wrote  Ibsen  to  Brandes  in  1870, 
and  this  saying  actually  reveals  the  source  of  Ib- 
sen's power  over  us  better  than  any  lengthy  criti- 
cism could  do.  It  is  because  Ibsen  is  so  dissatisfied 
with  average  human  nature,  because  he  pierces 
through  its  self -regarding  egoism  and  realizes  its 

1  Henrick    Ibsen;    Bjornstjerne    Bjornson.     "Critical    Studies" 
by   George  Brandes.     London,    1899. 

[69] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

shallow  pretentiousness  that  he  has  had  the  power 
to  treat  public  opinion  in  ordinary  as  the  Voice 
of  mediocrity,  without  himself  being  either  a  su- 
perior person,  or  pessimist,  or  idealistic  preacher. 
As  a  poet  of  insight  Ibsen  sympathizes  with  hu- 
manity, as  a  moralist  he  sets  his  face  against  the 
average  man's  pettiness  and  self-complacency;  it 
is  this  two-sidedness  that  makes  him  formidable  to 
our  middle-class  communities  so  naively  in  love 
with  their  own  special  limitations,  so  bold  in  de- 
veloping their  life  on  material  lines,  so  fearful  of 
applying  to  themselves  unwelcome  truths. 

Has  English  society  the  ability  to  understand 
him?  This  is  the  question  which  really  concerns 
English  people,  and  one  which  they  are  incapable 
of  asking  themselves,  though  Brandes'  suggestive 
pages  lie  before  them.  And  at  this  question  Eng- 
lish Philistinism  opens  unastonished  eyes  and 
winks  blandly  at  the  reception  of  Ibsen  as  a  celeb- 
rity, and  at  the  growing  convention  that,  after  all, 
we  English  can  look  with  modest  satisfaction  at 
the  success  of  this  great  European  writer.  Birth- 
day honours !  opponents  hushed !  respectful  re- 
views I  let  us  shake  hands  I  While,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  Ibsen's  influence  over  here — owing  to  the 
English  people's  dislike  of  all  critical  truths — 
has  been  almost  null. 

[70] 


IBSEN    AND    THE    ENGLISH 

That  is  what  Brandes  understands,  no  doubt, 
despite  the  propaganda  of  the  loyal  Ibsenites — 
"thousands  of  copies  sold:  success  most  marked." 
Ibsen's  influence  has  been  practically  nil,  save  on 
a  small  socialistic-ethical  circle.  Ibsen's;  plays 
have  been  acted  to  nobody.  His  spirit  has  modi- 
fied our  complacent  acceptation  of  the  popular 
English  burlesque-of-life  drama  not  at  all.  No 
school  of  young  writers  has  been  stimulated  by  his 
work  to  try  to  create  love  for  an  intellectual  dra- 
ma. If  we  cannot  clear  our  minds  of  cant  in  the 
matter,  at  least  let  us  have  less  of  superior  cant 
involved  in  a  theoretical  acceptation  and  a  prac- 
tical denial.  But  let  us  admit  that  Ibsen's  influ- 
ence— on  his  commentators  has  been  most  marked ! 

And  yet  how  many  reasons  combine  to  make 
Ibsen  appear  in  part  acceptable  to  the  English 
spirit!  First  and  foremost  is  the  fact  that  Ibsen 
is,  among  other  things,  a  great  Moralist,  that  he 
attacks  life  with  seriousness,  that  he  is  not  a  pure 
artist  steeping  himself  in  the  beauty,  the  cruelty 
and  the  strangeness  of  life;  but  a  semi-earnest, 
semi-ironical  poet  occupied  with  the  problems  of 
conduct,  an  ethical  teacher  at  root,  speaking,  it  is 
true,  in  ironical  tones,  but  always  seeking  the  way. 
Secondly,  the  Scandinavian  people  to  whom  Ib- 
sen presents  us  come  surprisingly  near  us  in  their 

[71] 


FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

thoughts  and  feelings.  Less  stiff,  a  little  naive 
and  introspectively  morbid,  they  depart  from  us 
in  externals  and  reveal  their  near  relationship  to 
us  in  their  idealistic  hedging  over  life  and  conduct. 
Their  northern  blood  runs  also  in  our  veins;  and 
we  must  accept  them  with  all  their  queerness  and 
strangeness,  for  the  great  family  of  the  North 
unites  them  to  us:  a  group  are  we  standing  to- 
gether against  the  great  Southern  family  of  peo- 
ples whose  tastes  and  standards  we  Northerners 
have  scant  sympathy  with,  or  feel  ourselves  op- 
posed to.  Thirdly,  Ibsen,  as  presented  to  us  in 
Mr.  Archer's  translations,  is  remarkably  easy  to 
follow;  his  language  is  clear,  terse  and  simple, 
though  often  it  unfolds  his  meaning  by  the  deli- 
cate veils  of  symbolistic  poetry.  Fourthly,  the 
man  himself  is  generally  accepted  I  seriously  dis- 
cussed, as  we  know,  by  solid-brained,  by  influen- 
tial people !  How  near  that  touches  the  English 
soul,  and  in  itself  calls  forth  Britannic  public  ap- 
proval! And  it  is  just  there  that  the  joint  in 
Philistia's  armour-plating  gapes  a  little  and  shows 
us  the  discrepancy:  Ibsen,  on  the  one  hand,  a 
great  European  celebrity,  whom  we  are  ashamed 
not  to  know,  "sold  in  thousands,"  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  Ibsen's  dramas  left  in  the  hands  of  a 
small  coterie  of  enthusiasts,  abandoned  to  the  de- 

[72] 


IBSEN   AND    THE   ENGLISH 

votion  of  a  handful  of  amateurs.  Ibsen's  dramas 
are  not  acted,  cannot  be  acted,  because  the  English 
cultured  Philistinism  is  not  ready  for  them;  is, 
indeed,  innately  hostile  to  them.  All  this  is  very 
obvious.     Let  us  get  to  a  little  analysis. 

"Brand"  is  undoubtedly  of  Ibsen's  works  the 
one  most  congenial  to  the  English  taste.  It  is 
the  most  moral.  Brand  is  a  serious  person,  a 
clergyman  full  of  zeal.  Religious  enthusiasm 
we  can  understand.  We  give  our  men  of  zeal 
in  England  rope  enough  for  them  to  commit  them- 
selves, on  the  plea  of  the  public  weal.  After  all, 
it  may  be  that  the  Brands  will  save  us  from  the 
burning.  To  look  down  on  such  men  (as  we  must) 
from  the  superior  standpoint  of  moral  worldli- 
ness,  and  yet  not  to  abandon  the  Old  Testament 
spirit  entirely,  this  is  a  daily  lesson  in  finesse  for 
the  English  conscience.  But,  on  the  whole, 
"Brand"  we  approve  of.  Does  it  not  make  for 
morality'?  Are  there  not  three  or  four  transla- 
tions of  this  work  in  the  market  to  one  of  "Peer 
Gynt'"? 

In  "Peer  Gynt"  have  we  not  an  uneasy  suspi- 
cion that  Ibsen  is  satirising  us?  Given  an  Eng- 
lish background  and  atmosphere,  "Peer  Gynt" 
might  read  as  a  fantastic  analysis  of  many  an 
English  soul,  self-analytic  for  once  in  its  desire  to 

[73] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

get  wholly  clean.  A  true  Northern  nature  has 
Peer  Gynt,  and  semi-English  in  his  compromising, 
greedy,  problem-making,  enterprising,  mystical 
conscience,  with  idealistic  aspirations  shot  with 
the  grossest  materialism :  a  psychological  document 
for  all  peoples  of  Teutonic  stock;  but  a  nature 
without  the  grand  English  recipe  for  self-satis- 
faction. For  the  English  mind  hates  above  all 
things  to  search  into  itself.  Too  well  it  knows 
that  beneath  its  skin  of  satisfied  conventionalism, 
stretch  the  queerest  depths  of  human  nature ;  that 
is  why  we  all  live  on  the  comfortable  surface  of 
things,  healthily.  At  all  costs  we  must  preserve 
our  spirituality,  for  if  we  have  that  to  fall  back  on, 
we  feel  safe  in  acting  in  comfortable  worldly  fash- 
ion. From  these  two  reservoirs  in  our  nature 
gushes  forth  unconsciously  English  cant,  i.  e.^  vir- 
tuous interpretations  of  our  very  mixed  motives. 
We  turn  on  the  spiritual  tap,  so  to  speak,  when  we 
explain  to  the  other  nations  our  disinterestedness, 
but  the  worldly  tap,  still  running,  we  ignore. 
All  our  motives  mixed  virtuously  are  very  like 
Peer  Gynt's,  but  Ibsen's  poem  is  far  too  frank  ever 
to  be  liked  by  us. 

As  for  "Ghosts,"  we  take  back  the  cataract  of 
abusive  epithets  that  hailed  the  drama,  "putrid 
carrion,"  "filthy,"  "prurient  garbage,"  etc.,  etc.; 

[74] 


IBSEN    AND    THE    ENGLISH 

we  abandon  that  frantic  dance  where  Mrs, 
Grundy's  outraged  feelings  led  out  Public  Mo- 
rality to  a  solemn  pas  de  deux.  It  was  an  im- 
pressive, if  funny,  spectacle  to  see  the  two  old 
things  rej  uvenescing  at  the  fountain  of  a  vir- 
tuous mistake!  Ibsen — we  bow  our  heads — is 
now  a  moral  celebrity.  Let  bygones  be  bygones, 
so  long  as  nobody  insists  on  acting  this  most  un- 
pleasant play.  And  Ibsen'?  Is  he  not  conscious 
of  having  gone  a  little  far  in  "Ghosts'"?  Genius, 
of  course,  has  its  privileges,  its  distressing  insight 
into  social  ulcers;  but  why  brandish — .  LIow- 
ever,  let  us  forget  it  all.  We  have  our  Censor  of 
Plays. 

In  "The  Doll's  House"  Ibsen  was  really  not  so 
very,  very  far  from  popularity.  Nora's  strange 
conduct  was  debated,  it  excited  society's  virtuous 
bosoms.  Ought  she  to  leave  her  home?  asked 
the  English  man  and  woman,  and  an  exceedingly 
popular  English  man  of  letters  wrote  a  sequel  to 
show  what  happens  when  the  husband  and  the 
servants  are  left  in  charge!  In  Sir  Walter  Be- 
sant's  sequel  the  husband  abandoned  took  to  drink, 
and  the  children  fell  ill,  whereat  a  vicious  neigh- 
bour over  the  way  was  scandalized,  and  returned 
to  the  seemly  courses  of  a  respectable  family  man. 
(And  do  not  let  us  dismiss  this  "Sandford  and  Mer- 

[75] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

ton"  solution  of  Ibsen's  ethical  problem  as  too 
naive,  too  incredibly  simple.  Incredibly  simple  it 
may  be ;  but  how  practical,  how  English  in  re-af- 
firming the  narrow,  insular  attitude  to  art — i.  e.^ 
what  the  English  mind  wants  is  that  good,  strong, 
healthy  optimism,  that  healthy  tone  in  literature 
which  it  believes  is  conducive  to  morality,  and 
then  again  to  more  morality,  and  still  once  more 
to  morality.  What  the  English  nature  loves  is  a 
positive  solution  of  every  problem.  What  it  asks 
from  art  is — ma'ke  me  more  E?igUsh.  An  Eng- 
lishman, to  do  him  justice,  is  conscientiously  ready 
to  go  along  with  the  artist  into  any  examination 
of  life,  if  he  can  arrive  thereby  at  some  standard 
in  practical  ethics  which  he  may  apply  to  conduct, 
if  he  can  rise  up  from  art  feeling  his  attitude  to 
himself  and  his  "mission,"  and  his  financial  invest- 
ments are  thereby  strengthened.  But  art's  pri- 
mary purpose  is  to  reveal,  and  by  reflecting  back 
the  stream  of  life,  by  creating  new  valuations, 
strange  new  effects,  and  by  showing  all  forces  at 
work  equally,  art  unsettles  by  its  revelations ;  and 
once  launched  into  this  mirage  of  the  ocean  of 
life  the  English  mind  loses  its  bearings.  Con- 
fronted by  art  with  life  as  a  spectacle,  the  Eng- 
lish nature  can  only  use  its  special  weapons — 
character  and  conduct.     It  can  only  ask  in  util- 

[76] 


IBSEN    AND    THE    ENGLISH 

itarian  fashion:  What  is  the  solution'?  Where 
is  the  moral?  What  ought  to  be  done?  But 
Ibsen,  though  deeply  concerned  with  conduct,  is 
artist  enough  to  bring  forward  situations  -without 
special  solutions,  and  show  us  the  individual 
hampered  by  circumstances  succumbing  to  Fate. 
Once  bereft  of  its  great  weapon — character — the 
English  mind  asks  powerlessly,  "Why  plunge  me 
into  all  this?  Why  harrow  me  and  bother  me 
with  the  bewildering  spectacle  of  life  triumph- 
ing over  me,  and  things  going  wrong?" 

Now  in  Ibsen's  plays,  things  commonly  do  go 
wrong  more  or  less,  e.  g.^  "Hedda  Gabler,"  "Ros- 
mersholm,"  "Little  Eyolf,"  "The  Master  Build- 
er"; it  is  life,  and  Ibsen  is  the  old  artist  moralist^ 
exhibiting  to  us  the  wrongness  of  life.  But  this 
the  English  mind  hates — hates  because  its  mental 
stock  is  invested  in  going  concerns,  earthly  or  heav- 
enly ;  concerns  that  make  for  more  duty,  for  more 
health,  for  more  energy.  The  modern  English- 
man has  almost  come  to  be  a  well-paid  share- 
holder in  family  life,  political  life,  and  remunera- 
tive opinion.  He  does  not  want  to  be  uijsettled, 
to  be  made  uneasy  in  his  convictions  about  life,  he 
wants  to  be  optimistic,  to  make  things  go  better, 
to  be  made  more  certain.  And  so  strong  is  this 
English  instinct  that  the  larger  vision  of  life  as  a 

[77] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

spectacle  has  been  crowded  and  shoved  in  the  Eng- 
lish consciousness  into  a  place  subordinate  to  the 
Englishman's  special  program  I  He  wants  art  to 
fit  human  life  carefully  into  a  special  narrow  ideal 
of  how  life  o\ught  to  go,  a  I'Anglaise.  That  art 
should  represent  life  as  accommodating  itself 
gratefully  to  our  ideals — excellent  but  utilitarian! 
Every  nation,  of  course,  holds  aloof  from  the  art 
that  is  too  foreign  to  its  own  life;  but  has  not 
the  English  mind,  by  adding  utilitarianism  to  its 
old  ethical  spirit,  got  to  a  point  where  it  rules  out 
freedom  of  art"?  It  does  not  want  art  now  to  rec- 
ognize the  way  life  is  going,  and  if  art  cannot  use 
life  for  special  (English)  purposes,  the  English 
mind  prefers  not  to  know  the  life,  not  to  admit 
the  art.  "Ibsen  is  against  health!  He  deals 
with  our  motives,"  so  runs  the  average  English  ob- 
jection. Healthiness  for  the  individual  at  the  cost 
of  stupidity'?  Perhaps.  Healthiness  for  society, 
for  the  artist  to  butter  up  its  ways  and  its  blind- 
ness, its  little  recipes  for  its  virtuous  existence. 
Its  virtuous  existence !  but  what  arz  art! 

We  touch  here  another  reason  why  the  Eng- 
lish nature  is  hostile  to  Ibsen.  Ibsen's  genius  is 
largely  concerned  with  showing  society  its  unflat- 
tering portrait.  Collective  opinion,  how  blunder- 
ing, forgetful,  flabbv  and  cowardly  it  often  is! 

'  [78] 


IBSEN    AND    THE    ENGLISH 

c.  (J.,  "An  Enemy  of  the  People."  But  an  English- 
man balances  his  own  intense  individualism  by  a 
curious,  and,  it  is  said,  an  admirable,  solidarity. 
In  this  strong  sense  of  solidarity  lies  much  of  the 
Englishman's  over-respect  for  society's  verdicts, 
much  of  his  slavish  deference  to  "good  form." 
But  Ibsen's  tendency  is  to  show  the  advanced  in- 
dividual so  much  in  the  right,  and  society  so  con- 
clusively in  the  wrong,  that  the  English  nature 
feels  its  sense  of  solidarity  is  endangered.  The 
Philistine  nature,  all  the  world  over,  knows  too 
well  that  to  have  the  solid  things  on  one's  side 
means  that  healthy  duty  and  energy  in  society  are 
thereby  being  capitalized  by  the  lucky  individual, 
and  public  security  and  confidence  are  returning 
cent  per  cent;  but  the  English  mind,  leaning  for 
support  on  its  sense  of  duty,  utility,  and  solidarity, 
perhaps  goes  furthest  in  its  inability  to  see  that  the 
gieat  artist's  appeal  is  to  life  from  the  verdict  of 
special  communities,  ruling  majorities  and  chang- 
ing civilizations.  And  thus  our  original  question 
— has  English  society  the  ability  to  understand 
Ibsen? — may  be  re-stated  by  our  saying  that  the 
current  of  the  national  life  sets  too  strongly  in 
certain  directions  for  Ibsen  to  be  accorded  gen- 
uinely more  than  a  general  lip-valuation. 
Brandes'  Essay  will  receive  most  marked,  most 

[79] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

respectful  attention — everywhere.  And  Ibsen 
will  remain  unacted — in  England,  where  as  in 
France  (for  different  reasons)  the  community  has 
special  cause  not  to  understand  him,  and  so  can- 
not admire. 

1899 


[80] 


MR. JOSEPH   CONRAD 


MR.  JOSEPH  CONRAD 

(a)  an  appreciation  in   1898 

THE  sun  rises  and  sets  through  all  the  won- 
derful ages  on  a  prosaic  and  commonplace 
spectacle :  the  every-day  world.  To  men 
busied  in  their  little  crowd's  concerns,  struggling 
to  best  others,  the  daily  life  is  seen  in  the  morning 
light,  here  in  their  work  in  the  fields,  there  in  the 
city,  as  a  succession  of  hard  facts  to  be  squared, 
suffered,  or  ameliorated,  a  life  of  well-known 
surfaces  and  confused  depths,  with  odd  varieties 
of  sensation  stringing  it,  and  the  necessity  for 
action  always  hurrying  the  individual  past  self- 
realization  and  deep  perception.  And  in  the 
midst  of  this  light-of-day,  solid  world  of  matter- 
of-fact  appearances  and  startling  confusions  oc- 
casionally comes  a  glimpse  of  a  mysterious  world 
behind  the  apparent,  a  shattering  of  the  human 
surfaces  that  death  or  love  perchance  brings  us; 
but  the  revelation  passes,  and  the  tide  of  events, 
people,  circumstances,  rolls  on  again  mechanically, 
and  as  shockingly  natural  as  faces  crowd  upon  us 

[83] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

in  the  streets  of  our  inevitable  and  ridiculous 
civilization. 

And  so  with  life  everywhere.  A  generation  pas- 
ses away,  to  the  last  man ;  and  to  the  immense  new 
concourse  of  people  that  throngs  the  old  streets, 
the  old  fields,  the  daily  trivial  round  appears  to 
have  always  been  cast  for  them,  to  be  always  go- 
ing to  be  theirs.  But  each  generation,  because 
it  lives  on  surfaces  and  is  so  dull  in  its  imagina- 
tion, so  harassed  by  work,  so  desperate  or  so  con- 
tented in  its  environment,  has  always  a  baffled 
feeling  that  if  it  could  but  get  a  connected  view  of 
itself  life  would  be  illuminated.  And  always 
the  generation  looks  round  for  the  men  who  are 
articulate,  and  pausing  at  the  orators,  priests  and 
statesmen  recognizes  that  in  so  far  as  the  past 
generations  are  illumined  for  us  it  is  through  the 
work  of  the  artists. 

Whenever  the  artists  are  absent — in  enormous 
tracts  of  life,  that  is — human  nature  appears  to  the 
imagination  absolutely  uncanny  and  ghost-like. 
But  wherever  the  artist  has  been,  there  the  life  of 
man  appears  suddenly  natural  and  comprehensible. 
When  we  think  of  the  cities  of  Romanized  Brit- 
ain our  imagination  becomes  as  a  blank  wall  with 
a  few  historical  facts  staring  at  us  from  it.  But 
in  Rome  under  the  Csesars  human  life  is  almost 

[84] 


MR.   JOSEPH    CONRAD 

as  fresh  and  actual  to  us  as  in  London  today;  we 
see  and  hear  the  people  going  down  the  street,  the 
world  of  Horace,  Juvenal,  Catullus.  The  ap- 
pearance of  the  artist  makes  an  astonishing  differ- 
ence. Was  it  not  yesterday  that  one  of  them 
appeared,  and  Anglo-Indian  life  started  up  coher- 
ent out  of  the  huge  mass  of  historical  facts,  statis- 
tics, and  home  letters  that  had  stood  for  India  in 
the  British  imagination*?  Individual  life  in  gen- 
eral is  an  ego  asserting  itself  in  a  chaos  of  experi- 
ences, and  the  man  of  the  world  who  (touching 
spectacle  I)  failed  to  grasp  the  nature  of  his  wife 
and  misunderstood  his  own  children,  was  seen 
holding  fast  by  his  Thackeray  and  his  Dickens, 
creators  who  resolved  his  world  and  made  it  less 
uncanny  to  him.  To  mention  these  two  names  is 
forthwith  to  see  two  lamps  shining  in  the  strange 
darkness  of  the  unexplored  oceans  of  humanity. 
The  darkness  of  human  nature  is  really  every- 
where, the  commonplace  darkness,  and  the  lights 
are  very  few ;  and  so  even  the  unintelligent  cluster 
round  the  artists'  lamps. 

In  the  unillumined  tracts  of  swarming  life  the 
artist  suddenly  appears,  unexpected,  and  never  to 
be  foreseen.  They  come,  the  artists,  and  they  are 
always  welcome  (the  impostors  are  always  wel- 
comed by  humanity,  but  they  can  never  stay) ; 

[8^] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

they  come  to  us,  and  each  brings  along  with  him 
new  worlds,  spiritual,  powerful,  complex,  brutal 
or  subtle,  the  worlds  that  have  come  to  them 
through  contact  with  the  old  prosaic  spectacle  of 
the  everyday  world.  They  come,  and  at  the  first 
word  from  them  we  know  that  that  strange  world 
lives  and  dies  with  that  individual  artist.  And 
always  we  realize  how  unillumined  that  particu- 
lar tract  of  life,  stretching  before  us,  was  before 
we  heard  coming  from  it  the  artist's  voice. 

So  with  the  work  of  all  true  artists,  and  so  with 
the  work  of  Joseph  Conrad.  The  unexpected 
has  happened,  and  the  artist  has  appeared  where 
he  was  least  looked  for.  From  the  far  away,  ma- 
terial, jumbled  world  of  seamen,  from  the  strange 
places  of  the  earth  where  the  emphatic,  hard- 
fisted,  cautious  men  of  action  "civilize"  and  sub- 
jugate alien  races,  from  the  forecastle  and  the 
Eastern  ports  and  the  high  seas,  suddenly  springs 
this  artist's  living  world  of  men  and  shadows,  of 
passions,  shapes,  and  colours,  swiftly  arranging 
itself  in  meaning  outline.  The  artist  has  spoken : 
a  new  world  finds  a  voice;  and  we  understand. 
The  blank  solid  wall  of  the  familiar,  the  strange 
world  of  new  and  old  that  fronts  the  puzzled  sen- 
sations of  those  people  far  off,  has  melted  away 
before  this  artist,  and  he  has  seen  in  everything 

[86] 


MR.   JOSEPH    CONRAD 

the  significant  fact,  he  has  seen  and  shown  us  the 
way  that  that  man  spoke  or  this  wave  curled  before 
breaking.  It  is  always  what  the  artist  sees  that 
defines  his  quality;  and  whether  he  can  connect 
this  tangible  world  with  that  vast  unseen  ocean  of 
life  around  him,  that  determines  whether  he  is  a 
poet. 

What  is  the  quality  of  his  art"?  The  quality  of 
Mr,  Conrad's  art  is  seen  in  his  faculty  of  making 
us  perceive  men's  lives  in  their  natural  relation 
to  the  seen  universe  around  them;  his  men  are  a 
part  of  the  great  world  of  nature,  and  the  sea,  land 
and  sky  around  them  are  not  drawn  as  a  mere  back- 
ground, or  as  something  inferior  and  secondary  to 
the  human  will,  as  we  have  in  most  artists'  work. 
This  faculty  of  seeing  man's  life  in  relation  to  the 
seen  and  unseen  forces  of  nature  it  is  that  gives 
Mr.  Conrad's  art  its  extreme  delicacy  and  its  great 
breadth  of  vision.  It  is  pre-eminently  the  poet's 
gift,  and  is  very  rarely  conjoined  with  insight  into 
human  nature  and  power  of  conceiving  character. 
When  the  two  gifts  come  together  we  have  the 
poetic  realism  of  Turgenev's  novels.  Mr.  Con- 
rad's art  is  realism  of  that  order,  "The  Nigger  of 
the  Narcissus"  is  masterly  not  merely  because  the 
whole  illusion  of  the  sailor's  life  is  reproduced  be- 
fore our  eyes,  with  the  crew's  individual  and  col- 
[87l 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

lective  attitude  towards  one  another  and  their  offi- 
cers, with  the  daily  round  of  hardship,  peril,  and 
love  for  their  ship ;  but  because  the  ship  is  seen  as 
a  separate  thing  of  life,  with  a  past  and  a  destiny, 
floating  in  the  midst  of  the  immense,  mysterious 
universe  around  it;  and  the  whole  shifting  at- 
mosphere of  the  sea,  the  horizon,  the  heavens,  is 
felt  by  the  senses  as  mysteriously  near  us,  yet 
mysteriously  aloof  from  the  human  life  battling 
against  it.  To  reproduce  life  naturally,  in  its 
close  fidelity  to  breathing  nature,  yet  to  interpret 
its  significance,  and  to  make  us  see  the  great  uni- 
verse around — art  cannot  go  beyond  this,  except  to 
introduce  the  illusion  of  inevitability. 

We  find  life's  daily  necessity  in  Mr.  Conrad's 
art,  we  find  actuality,  charm,  magic;  and  to  de- 
mand inevitability  from  it  is  perhaps  like  asking 
for  inevitability  from  Chopin's  music.  For  Mr. 
Conrad's  art,  in  its  essence,  reminds  us  much  of 
his  compatriot's — it  is  a  delicate,  and  occa- 
sionally a  powerful  instrument.  There  is  a  story, 
"The  Lagoon,"  in  the  Tales  of  Unrest,  which  flows 
out  of  itself  in  subtle  cadence,  in  rise  and  flow  and 
fall  of  emotion,  just  as  you  may  hear  Ernst's  deli- 
cate music  rise  and  sweep  and  flow  from  the  violin. 
For  occasionally  the  author's  intense  fidelity  to  the 
life  he  has  observed  seems  to  melt  and  fade  away  in 

[88] 


MR.   JOSEPH    CONRAD 

a  lyrical  impulse,  the  hard  things  of  actual  life 
die  and  are  lost  in  a  song  of  beauty,  just  as  the 
night  comes  to  overwhelm  the  hard  edges  of  the 
day. 

They  are  incorrigible,  these  artists;  they  juggle 
with  reality  till  they  make  life  yield  up  all  its 
beauty  to  them ;  they  are  impostors,  humanity  an- 
grily feels,  for  why  should  they  have  deep  in 
them  these  organic  worlds  of  beauty  while  the 
daily  life  stares  stonily,  prosaically,  at  you  and 
me?  Yes,  they  are  impostors,  these  artists,  even 
as  old  Nature,  the  only  thing  they  love  in  their 
hearts,  is  the  greatest  artist  and  impostor  of  them 
all.  For  she,  as  they,  deals  in  perpetual  illusions, 
perpetual  appearances,  dreams  and  shifting  phan- 
tasies, the  hope  and  vision  of  beauty ;  she,  as  they, 
creates  dissolving  worlds,  fading  mirages  out  of 
the  stuff  men  call  reality,  out  of  the  earth  which 
mothers  everything — the  good  and  the  bad. 

1898 

(b)'  MR.  Conrad's  art 

In  "Nostromo,"  a  tale  of  the  seaboard  of 
Central  America,  Mr.  Conrad  has  achieved 
something  which  it  is  not  in  the  power  of 
any  English  contemporary  novelist  to  touch.     His 

[89] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

genius,  that  rose  to  the  consummate  art  of  'The 
Heart  of  Darkness"  and  the  beauty  of  "Youth," 
has  in  "Nostromo"  descended  a  step  or  two  to  a 
lower  plane  to  weave  the  more  orthodox,  struc- 
tured novel,  with  a  plot  and  denouement.  For  we 
cannot  disguise  that  the  weak  point  of  the  ordi- 
nary novel  is  the  conventionalized  plan  of  its 
structure.  Happily,  however,  Mr.  Conrad's  gifts 
have  triumphed  over  the  regular  form  pre- 
scribed for  the  public's  consumption:  "Nostromo" 
is  not  particularly  orthodox  in  its  structure,  and 
the  larger  canvas  Mr.  Conrad  has  chosen  on  this 
occasion  gives  him  more  elbow  room  to  show  the 
working  unity  and  harmonious  balance  of  his  gifts. 
We  draw  attention  to  the  harmonious  balance 
of  the  author's  vision  in  "Nostromo,"  for  to  speak 
frankly  we  did  not  expect  that  the  creator  of 
"Lord  Jim"  would  have  threaded  the  mazes  of  the 
situation  exposed  in  "Nostromo"  with  such  uner- 
ring steps,  or  would  have  so  clearly  shaped  the 
minor  clues  that  lead  us  to  the  main  issue.  If  we 
put  aside  the  somewhat  lengthy  handling  of  the 
early  history  of  the  San  Tome  silver  mine  and  the 
abrupt  and  hurried  final  chapters  that  describe 
Nostromo's  death,  which  are  artistically  too  vio- 
lent, there  is  scarcely  a  line  in  the  book  that  is  not 
essential  to  the  development  of  this  dramatic  pag- 

[90] 


MR.    JOSEPH    CONRAD 

cant  of  lite  in  a  South  American  State.  For  the 
book's  theme  is  not,  indeed,  the  life  and  death  of 
the  hero  Nostromo,  El  Capitan  de  Cargadores,  as 
Mr.  Conrad  no  doubt  originally  conceived  it, 
neither  is  it  the  story  of  the  vicissitudes  of  the 
great  San  Tome  silver  mine  and  of  the  Europeans 
V  ho  develope  it  in  Sulaco,  as  in  Part  I,  it  threat- 
ens to  become.  Mr.  Conrad's  artistic  instinct  has 
perhaps  unconsciously  led  him  to  clear  the  reefs 
of  these  subsidiary  issues,  and  has  brought  him 
and  his  readers  safe  into  the  open  sea,  whence  they 
can  look  back  at  the  sharp  outline  of  the  Costa- 
guanan  coast,  the  placid  waters  of  the  Golfo  Pla- 
cido,  and  realize  that  his  subject  is  the  great  mi- 
rage he  has  conjured  up  of  the  life  and  nature  of 
the  Costaguan  territory  lying  under  the  shadow  of 
the  mighty  Corderillas.  The  foreground  of 
"Nostromo"  is,  indeed,  the  dramatic  narrative  of 
the  political  and  revolutionary  vicissitudes  of  the 
town  of  Sulaco.  Shut  off  by  the  Corderillas  from 
the  other  portions  of  the  Republic  of  Costaguana, 
Sulaco  (though  dominated  politically  by  the  in- 
trigues of  native  military  dictators  and  parlia- 
mentarians, whose  successive  factions  rise  to 
power  by  hatching  periodic  revolutions)  is  in 
part  controlled  by  the  interests  of  the  European 
and  American  capitalists,  who  have  developed 
[91] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

the  silver  mines,  introduced  the  service  of 
the  O.  S.  N.  Shipping  Co.,  and  projected  the 
National  Central  Railway.  Thus,  the  Europeans, 
who  direct  the  Indian  mining  population  and  the 
imported  Italian  workmen  and  dock  labourers  of 
the  shipping  and  railway  companies  can  hold,  more 
or  less,  in  check  the  native  South  American  popu- 
lace of  Sulaco.  At  the  period  when  the  tale  opens 
the  rival  Monterist  faction,  however,  is  just  gain- 
ing the  upper  hand,  and  is  thirsting  to  cut  the 
throat  of  every  prominent  Moderate  or  Ribierist  in 
Costaguana.  The  story  of  the  street-fighting  and 
the  suppression  of  Gamacho  and  his  Nationals  by 
the  mixed  group  of  Europeans  and  Riberists  with 
Nostromo,  the  magnificent  Capitan,  who  leads  his 
body  of  Cargadozes  against  the  town  rabble  and 
then  hastily  takes  out  to  sea  a  lighter  with  its  cargo 
of  silver  ingots,  just  in  time  to  escape  the  raid  of 
Colonel  Sotillo  and  the  revolted  garrison  of  Esme- 
ralda, while  Pedro  Montero  and  his  cut-throats 
sweep  into  the  town  from  the  mountains — all  this 
is  told  us  through  the  medium  of  various  charac- 
ters, as  Captain  Mitchell,  the  pompous  old  resi- 
dent officer  of  the  O.  S.  N.  Co.,  Nostromo  himself, 
Martin  Decoud,  Spanish  creole,  Parisian  boule- 
vardier  and  Ribierist  journalist,  Doctor  Monyg- 
ham,  a  broken  and  gloomy  army  doctor,  who  has 

[92] 


MR.    JOSEPH    CONRAD 

seen  too  much  of  Costaguana  and  its  revolutions 
to  have  any  illusions  left ;  and  indirectly  through 
the  medium  of  Mrs.  Gould,  the  wife  of  the  mine- 
owner,  Giorgio  Viola,  an  old  Garibaldian  soldier, 
and  Colonel  Sotillo,  military  bravo,  and  torturer 
of  the  miserable  Hirsch,  the  German  Jew.  Mr. 
Conrad  has  never  before  attempted  to  group  to- 
gether such  a  variety  of  characters,  to  exhibit  so 
many  conflicting  issues,  and  to  make  pass  before 
us  such  a  dramatic  pageant  as  in  this  wonderful 
mirage  of  South  American  life.  How  has  he 
been  able  to  do  it,  and  what  is  the  nature  of  the 
artistic  method  by  which  scene  after  scene  flows 
clearly,  freely,  in  natural  and  convincing  sequence, 
leaving  the  impression  on  the  reader  of  having 
seen  and  assisted  at  a  national  drama? 

The  critic,  pressed  for  an  explanation  of  Mr. 
Conrad's  special  power  by  which  he  accomplishes 
particular  feats  beyond  his  rivals',  may  boldly  de- 
clare that  he  has  a  special  poetic  sense  for  the 
psychology  of  scene,  by  which  the  human 
drama  before  us  is  seen  in  its  just  relation 
to  the  whole  enveloping  drama  of  Nature 
around,  forming  both  the  immediate  envi- 
ronment and  the  distant  background.  In  Mr. 
Conrad's  vision  we  may  imagine  Nature  as  a 
ceaselessly   flowing   river   of   life,    out   of   which 

[93] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

the  tiny  atom  of  each  man's  individual  life  em- 
erges into  sight,  stands  out  in  the  surrounding  at- 
mosphere, and  is  lost  again  in  the  infinite  succession 
of  the  fresh  waves  of  life  into  which  it  dissolves. 
The  author's  pre-eminence  does  not  lie  specifically 
in  his  psychological  analysis  of  character,  but  in 
the  delicate  relation  of  his  characters  to  the  whole 
environment — to  the  whole  mirage  of  life  in  which 
their  figures  are  seen  to  move.  Thus,  the  character 
drawings  per  se  of  Mrs.  Gould  and  Dr.  Monyg- 
ham.  Captain  Mitchell  and  old  Viola,  though  ad- 
mirable studies,  cannot  be  called  deeply  original 
creations;  but  their  human  significance  is  great 
if  we  consider  them  as  figures  which  serve  as  ar- 
resting points  by  which  we  can  focus  the  charac- 
ter of  the  national  drama  around  them  and  so  pene- 
trate to  the  larger  drama  of  Nature.  ■  Thus,  while 
the  psychology  of  certain  characters,  as  Charles 
Gould,  Decoud,  and  Nostromo  himself,  is  indeed 
not  always  clear  and  convincing,  when  we  take 
the  figure  of  Mrs.  Gould  and  analyse  the  effect 
made  on  us  by  the  vision  of  her  exquisite  and  gra- 
cious nature,  moving  "with  her  candid  eyes  very 
wide  open,  her  lips  composed  into  a  smile,"  amid 
the  electric  and  sullen  atmosphere  of  this  South 
American  town,  weighed  down  by  the  ever-hanging 
menace  of  her  husband's  danger,  ministering  to  all 

[94] 


MR.    JOSEPH    CONRAD 

the  world  in  turn  seeking  her  ear,  while  conscious 
in  secret  that  her  husband,  in  his  fanatical  devotion 
to  the  interests  of  the  San  Tome  mine,  has  surren- 
dered, merged,  and  lost  sight  of  his  love  for  her — 
if  we  consider  the  spirit  of  this  woman  we  shall 
recognize  how  exquisitely  just  is  the  author's 
sense  of  perspective  which  has  led  him  to  place 
her  so  that,  like  a  figure  in  a  landscape,  she 
serves  as  the  gleam  of  light  against  the  sombre 
and  threatening  horizon.  And  so  against  the 
devotion  to  duty  of  Giorgio  Viola,  the  old  Gari- 
baldian  hero,  the  Spanish-American  revolution- 
ary rabble  of  Sulaco  shows  up  "sullen,  thievish, 
vindictive  and  bloodthirsty,"  And  thus  against 
the  wooden-headed  unimaginativeness  of  the 
Britisher,  Captain  Mitchell,  the  hard-headed 
idealism  of  Charles  Gould,  and  the  gloomy  dis- 
illusionment of  Dr.  Monygham,  the  whole  racial 
genius  of  this  captivating  and  gracious  South 
American  land,  semi-barbarous,  with  its  old- 
world,  Spanish  traditions  and  its  "note  of  passion 
and  sorrow,"  stands  forth  triumphantly;  and  its 
atmosphere,  which  is,  indeed,  an  artistic  quintes- 
sence of  both  Central  American  and  South  Ameri- 
can States,  penetrates  home  to  our  European  con- 
sciousness. And  if  this  is  so — and  if  in  Mr.  Con- 
rad's art  the  whole  mirage  of  Nature  be  every- 

[95] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

thing,  with  its  series  of  flowing  scenes  in  which 
are  reflected  the  subtly  shifting  tides  of  human 
emotion  and  human  passion — we  shall  see  why  it 
is  that  the  artistic  imperfections  of  some  of  his 
figures  seem  of  curiously  little  importance.  It  is 
because  with  most  writers  the  whole  illusion  of 
the  scene  is  centred  in  their  characters,  but  with 
Mr.  Conrad  the  central  illusion  is  the  whole  mirage 
of  Nature,  in  which  the  figures  are,  strictly  speak- 
ing, the  human  accessories.  Thus  in  "The  Heart 
of  Darkness,"  that  sinister  presentment  of  the  im- 
becility, the  cruelty,  and  the  rapacity  of  the  white 
man  in  the  Dark  Continent,  the  effect  is  got  by  the 
tropical  atmosphere  of  a  savage  environment  dom- 
inating the  white  man's  morale,  and  sapping  him, 
body,  mind,  and  soul.  Thus  in  "Lord  Jim," 
Jim's  actionsi  and  words  and  thoughts  are  not 
nearly  so  convincing  in  themselves  as  the  poetic 
conception  of  his  figure  placed  by  fate,  and  by 
the  force  of  his  momentary  break-down,  in  the 
environment  of  the  wanderer  of  the  Eastern 
seas.  It  is  not,  indeed,  essential  to  the  author's 
spell  over  us  that  they  should  be.  This  great 
gift  of  Mr.  Conrad's,  his  special  sense  of  the 
psychology  of  scene,  that  he  shares  with  certain 
of  the  great  poets  and  the  great  artists  who  have 
developed  it  each  on  his  own  chosen  lines,  it  is 

[96] 


MR.   JOSEPH    CONRAD 

that  marks  him  out  for  pre-eminence  among  the 
novelists.  His  method  of  poetic  realism  is,  in- 
deed, intimately  akin  to  that  of  the  great  Russian 
novelists,  but  Mr.  Conrad,  often  inferior  in  the 
psychology  of  character,  has  outstripped  them  in 
his  magical  f>ower  of  creating  the  whole  mirage  of 
Nature.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  we  regret  that 
the  last  two  chapters  describing  Nostromo's  death 
are  included  in  the  novel.  Their  touch  of  melo- 
drama does  violence  to  the  evening  "stillness  of  the 
close.  The  narrative  should  have  ended  with  the 
monologue  of  Captain  Mitchell  and  the  ironic  com- 
mentary of  Dr.  Monygham  on  the  fresh  disillusion- 
ment in  store  for  the  regime  of  "Civilization" 
planted  by  European  hands  on  the  bloodstained 
soil  of  the  Republic  of  Costaguana. 

1904 

(c)    MR.   CONRAD's   basis 

The  dominant  impression  left  by  "Notes  on 
Life  and  Letters"^  is  the  creative  veracity  of  Mr. 
Conrad's  mind.  When  moved  by  sympathy  of 
understanding  his  critical  appreciations  are  lucid, 
penetrating,  and  comprehensive,  as  his  luminous 
pages  on  Daudet,  Maupassant,  Anatole  France, 

1  "Notes    on   Life    and   Letters,"    by   Joseph    Conrad,    London, 
1921. 

[97] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

and  Turgenev,  and  his  seamen's  tributes  to  Mar- 
ryat  and  Fenimore  Cooper  attest,  but  his  tempera- 
ment does  not  readily  imbue  itself  with  the  at- 
mosphere or  follow  the  curves  of  other  men's  works, 
as  the  born  critic's  must  do.  In  two  cases  Mr. 
Conrad  does  so;  in  that  of  Maupassant  and  that 
of  Anatole  France  he  bows  his  head  in  sympathy 
and  in  homage,  and  enters  entirely  within  these 
masters'  thresholds.  His  tribute  to  Turgenev  is 
also  a  beautiful  thing  in  the  spirit  of  its  emotion, 
but  the  paper  on  Maupassant  has  the  finality  of 
perfect  justice;  nothing  truer  on  him  has  been 
written.  But  when  an  author's  platform  or  es- 
thetic basis  does  not  please  Mr.  Conrad's  temper- 
ament, as  in  the  case  of  Mr.  George  Bourne's 
"The  Ascending  Eft'ort,"  he  obliterates  it  with 
his  own  dicta.  Naturally,  creative  minds  have 
their  own  prepossessions,  and  subjects  are  apt  to 
be  soils  in  which  they  propagate  their  own  cut- 
tings and  grow  their  own  exquisite  flowers.  We 
recognize  this  even  in  the  sensitive  paper  on 
Henry  James,  which,  while  defining  him  as  "the 
historian  of  fine  consciences,"  yields  only  the 
most  ghostly  impression  of  that  master's  literary 
kingdom  and  individual  temperament.  This  is 
not  because  Mr.  Conrad  does  not  bring  to  Henry 
James'    work   profound    and    discerning   insight, 

[98] 


MR.    JOSEPH    CONRAD 

but  because  his  temperament  bids  him  create 
something  positively  his  own,  something  imbued 
with  his  own  magic,  his  own  artistic  chiaroscuro. 
The  born  artist  must  be  true  to  his  own  vision; 
the  born  critic  to  those  of  other  men. 

Mr.  Conrad  tells  us  in  his  preface  that  he  is  con- 
stitutionally unable  to  appear  en  pa?itoufles,  and 
this  may  lead  one  to  the  secret  of  his  temperament. 
His  artistic  sensibilities  always  lead  him  back  to 
fundamentals,  and  the  latter  always  reinforce  his 
sensibilities.  His  hatred  for  loft)^  generalities 
and  idealistic  assumptions  is  because  they  violate 
the  basis  of  artistic  veracity;  they  do  not  spring 
from  the  feeling  born  of  knowledge,  from  direct 
contact  with  life,  but  are  like  hot  air,  dissipated 
by  the  first  keen  wind  of  reality.  And  it  is  real- 
ity with  which  Mr.  Conrad  is  concerned,  the 
reality  not  only  of  the  visible  world  without  us, 
but  of  the  obscure  thoughts  of  our  hearts.  As 
an  example  of  the  searching  penetration  of  his 
vision  take  his  paper  on  "Autocracy  and  War," 
dated  1905,  wherein  he  predicted  the  fall  of 
the  Russian  autocracy;  the  Bolshevist  revolu- 
tion, "a  rising  of  siaves";  the  era  of  capitalistic 
State  Wars,  "the  idea  of  ceasing  to  grow  in 
territory,  in  strength,  in  wealth,  in  influence — 
in  anything  but  wisdom  and  self-knowledge, — 

[99] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

is  odious  to  them  as  the  omen  of  the  end"; 
and  finally  the  warning,  "Russia  weakened  down 
to  the  second  place  or  Russia  eclipsed  altogether 
during  the  throes  of  her  regeneration  will  answer 
equally  well  the  plans  of  German  policy — 'Le 
Prussianisme — viola  L'ennemi !'  "  The  hand- 
writing was  on  the  wall,  it  may  be  said.  Yes,  but 
there  were  many  inscriptions  on  many  walls,  frag- 
mentary and  contradictory,  and  Mr.  Conrad  by 
his  grasp  of  fundamentals,  by  the  force  of  his 
ruthless  sincerity  and  fine  scepticism,  by  the 
depths  of  his  conviction  and  of  his  prejudices  if 
you  like,  pieced  that  script  together  and  read  it 
correctly. 

Artistic  veracity — i.  e.,  veracity  to  the  forces 
of  life  within  and  without  us — is  Mr.  Conrad's 
basis.  And,  never  leaving  go  of  the  funda- 
mentals, he  brings  into  play,  with  grace  and  ease, 
all  the  qualities  of  his  temperament.  For  a  bril- 
liant piece  of  swordplay,  uncanny  in  its  bravura, 
note  how  in  "The  Censor  of  Plays"  he  advances 
on  that  unhappy  functionary  and  cuts  off  his  head. 
The  feat  is  accomplished  in  an  address  of  iron- 
ical raillery  that  leaves  "the  grotesque  thing  nod- 
ding its  mandarin  head"  helpless  at  our  feet. 
And  it  is  only  that  this  "obscure,  hollow,  Chinese 
monstrosity  ornamented  with  Mr.  Stiggins's  plug 
[loo] 


MR.   JOSEPH    CCNBAD 

hat  and  cotton  umbrella  by  its  anxious  grand- 
mother the  State"  is,  as  Mr.  Conrad  asserts,  "an 
utterly  unconscious  being"  that  the  Censorship 
still  survives!  This  brilliant  concentration  on 
the  bases  of  things  is  accompanied  by  a  concen- 
tration of  feeling  from  which  is  born — style.  It 
is  not  for  nothing  that  Mr.  Conrad  cannot  appear 
en  pantoujies.  If  he  risked  himself  outside  the 
territories  and  marked  boundaries  of  his  art  he 
would  be  false  to  his  creative  veracity.  His 
feeling  born  of  knowledge  and  intimate  percep- 
tion is  his  manner.  And  it  would  be  to  break 
Proe'pero's  wand,  for  him  to  write  uninspired  by 
the  force  of  his  sincerity,  from  which  his  vision 
proceeds.  No,  Mr.  Conrad  cannot  appear  en 
pantoufles.  It  is  against  his  nature.  It  is  not 
to  our  interest. 

1921 


[101] 


MR.    C.    M.    DOUGHTY 


MR.  C.  M.  DOUGHTY 

(a)     DOUGHTy's     "ARABIA    DESERTa" 

This  paper,  which  in  its  original  form  appeared  in 
The  Academy,  1902,  was  adapted  in  1908  to  form  the 
introduction  to  the  abridged  edition,  "Wanderings  in 
Arabia." 

LEST  I  be  suspected  by  men  who  do  not 
know  '"'Arabia  Deserta"  of  too  great  a  par- 
tiality for  it,  let  me  here  quote  the  critical 
estimate  of  Mr.  D.  G.  Hogarth,  whose  knowledge 
of  the  literature  of  the  subject  is  probably  un- 
rivalled among  modern  Englishmen.  In  his 
work  "The  Penetration  of  Arabia"  (London, 
1904)  Mr.  Hogarth  sa3^s: 

No  one  has  looked  so  narrowly  at  the  land  and  the 
life  of  Arabia  as  Doughty,  and  no  one  has  painted  them 
in  literature  with  a  touch  so  sensitive,  so  sincere  and  so 
sure.  And  not  only  Bedawin  life,  of  whose  hardships  he 
suffered  the  last,  wandering  as  one  poorer  than  the  poor- 
est, but  also  the  life  of  the  oasis  towns  of  Nejd. 

Right  Elizabethan  or  not,  no  word  of  Doughty 's 
best  description  of  the  desert  and  the  desert  folk  can  be 
spared.     Each  falls  inevitably  and  indispensably  to  its 

[105] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

place,  as  in  all  great  style ;  and  each  strikes  full  and  true 
on  every  reader  who  has  seen,  be  it  ever  so  little,  the 
dusty  steppe  and  the  black  booths  of  hair.  One  can  do 
Doughty 's  pregnant  pages  no  justice  by  quotation;  but, 
for  an  example,  lest  I  seem  to  praise  him  overmuch  with- 
out book,  let  me  offer  this  to  any  one  who  has  had  ex- 
perience of  the  camel. 

After  citing  a  passage  Mr.  Hogarth  continues: 

Yet  this  no  better  picture  than  a  hundred  others  you 
may  find  in  that  Georgic  of  the  desert.  Therein  one 
sees  not  so  mjuch  particular  scenes  as  types ;  even  as,  on 
reading  Doughty's  personal  adventures,  one  feels  him  to 
be  less  an  individual  than  a  type  of  all  his  kind  under- 
going a  certain  trial  of  spirit.  His  book  belongs  to  that 
rare  and  supreme  class  in  which  the  author  speaks  not 
for  himself,  but  for  all  who  might  find  themselves  in 
like  case. 

No  critical  estimate  could  sum  up  better  than 
the  above  the  characteristics  of  "Arabia  Deserta." 

And  it  is  "for  the  sake  of  the  appeal  that  this 
great  book  should  make  to  a  wider  audience  than 
the  few  who  feel  enthusiasm  for  Arab  things" 
that  I  have  sought  and  obtained  the  author's  sanc- 
tion to  make  the  abridgment  of  his  narrative 
here  presented.^  It  is,  indeed,  in  the  conviction 
that  the  book  has  only  to  become  known  to  the 
English  public  to  be  hailed  by  all  for  what  it  is — 

'^  "Wanderings    in    Arabia."     Duckworth    and    Co.,    1908. 

[106] 


MR.    C.    M.    DOUGHTY 

a  masterpiece  second  to  none  in  our  literature  of 
travel — that  I  have  attempted  the  task  of  abridg- 
ment. And  here  the  writer  must  confess  that  he 
knows  no  other  book  of  travel  which  makes  him 
so  proud  that  the  author  is  an  Englishman. 
Gentleness,  courage,  humanity,  endurance,  and 
the  insight  of  genius,  these  were  the  qualities  that 
carried  Doughty  safely  through  his  strange 
achievement  ot  adventuring  alone,  a  professed 
Christian,  amid  the  fanatical  Arabians.  That  he 
proclaimed  his  race  and  faith  wherever  he  went  is 
a  supreme  testimony  to  the  firmness  of  his  spirit 
and  to  the  magnetism  of  a  frank  and  mild  nature 
that  evoked  so  often  in  response  the  humanity  un- 
derlying the  Arabs'  fanaticism.  His  narrative, 
indeed,  testifies  how  much  milk  of  human  kind- 
ness the  solitary  stranger  could  count  upon  finding 
in  the  breast  of  all  but  the  most  fanatical  Moham- 
medans. But  it  is  surel)^  less  the  author's  valuable 
discoveries  than  the  intense  human  interest  of  his 
book  that  will  bring  him  enduring  fame"?  What 
an  unforgettable  picture  it  is,  that  of  this  English- 
man of  an  old-fashioned  stamp  adventuring  alone 
for  many  long  months  in  the  deserts  of  Arabia,  go- 
ing each  day  not  very  sure  of  his  life,  yet  obsti- 
nately proclaiming  to  all  men,  to  sheikhs  and 
shepherds,  to  fanatical  tribesmen  in  every  encamp- 
[107] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

ment,  that  he  is  a  Nasrany,  a  Christian  I  With  a 
pistol  hidden  in  his  bosom,  and  a  few  gold  pieces 
in  his  purse,  with  a  sack  of  clothes  and  books  and 
drugs  thrown  on  the  hired  camel  of  his  rafiks,  or 
wandering  guides,  he  goes  onward,  a  quiet  man  of 
peace,  a  scholar  of  scholars,  applying  his'  stores 
of  learning  to  interpret  all  the  signs  and  tokens  of 
the  Bedouins'  life,  gaining  thereby  a  draught  of 
camel's  milk  in  the  sickness  of  exhaustion,  and  now 
drawing  on  himself  an  Emir's  irony  by  his  rough 
bluntness  of  speech.  He  goes,  this  good  man, 
this  Englishman,  alone  into  the  heart  of  hostile 
Arabia,  insularly  self-conscious  yet  lost  in  the  sen- 
sation of  his  adventurings,  keenly  alive  to  every 
sight  and  sound,  very  shrewd  in  his  calculations, 
often  outwitted  and  sometimes  despitefuUy 
treated,  a  great  reader  of  men's  characters, 
always  trusting  in  God,  yet  keeping  a  keen  watch 
on  the  Arabians'  moods;  and  as  he  journeys  on, 
this  scholar,  geologist,  archseologist,  philologist, 
and  anti-Mohammedan,  we  see  Arabia  as  only  a 
genius  can  reveal  it  to  us ;  we  see,  hear,  and  touch 
its  people  as  our  most  intimate  friends.  And  all 
these  Arabs'  characters,  daily  cares,  occupations, 
pleasures,  worries,  their  inner  and  outer  selves, 
are  closer  to  us  than  are  the  English  villagers  liv- 
ing at  our  own  doors.     It  is  a  great  human  picture 

[108] 


MR.   C.    M.    DOUGHTY 

Doughty  has  drawn  for  us  in  "Arabia  Deserta," 
and  not  the  least  testimony  to  the  great  art  of  the 
writer  is  that  we  see  him  in  the  Arabians'  minds. 
But  wherever  the  wandering  Englishman  goes  he 
cannot  stay  long.  He  must  move  on.  From  town 
to  village,  from  village  out  into  the  wilderness, 
from  Nomad's  tent  to  Nomad's  tent  he  is  carried, 
fetched,  dropped,  left  by  the  wayside  by  his  un- 
easy raf iks.  The  fingers  of  the  most  fanatical  itch 
to  cut  the  Nasrany's  throat,  but  with  the  chief 
sheykhs  and  the  rich  elders  of  the  towns  it  is  an 
instinct  of  living  graciousness  and  humanity  to 
shelter  him,  show  him  true  hospitality,  and  drive 
away  the  mob  of  base-born  fellows  clamouring  at 
the  stranger's  heels.  So  Doughty  makes  strong 
friends  wherever  he  journeys,  finds  kindly  shelter 
with  liberal -hearted  hosts  who  love  to  sit  and 
question  him  about  the  wonders  of  the  Western 
world,  and  hear  him  speak  his  learned  mind  on 
Eastern  ways;  until  at  last,  a  little  tired  of  the 
Nasrany's  power  of  sitting  still,  tired  of  the  con- 
stant clamour  of  the  town,  and  of  their  own  grow- 
ing unpopularity  because  they  shelter  him,  they 
open  suddenly  some  postern  gate,  pack  the  Nas- 
rany  and  his  saddle  bags  upon  some  worthless 
beast,  and  send  him  forth  into  the  desert  with  some 
brutish  serving-man  to  act  as  faithless  guide.  So 
[109] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

Doughty  goes,  protected  by  the  stars,  by  his  own 
shrewd  weakness,  by  chance  and  by  his  sturdy  ob- 
stinacy; he  goes  quite  safe,  yet  ever  in  jeopardy, 
trusting  in  Arab  human  nature,  and  in  his  own 
command  of  Arab  lore,  yet  humanly  alarmed  and 
ready  to  cry  out  when  his  fanatical  companions 
eye  his  bulging  saddlebags  and  feel  the  edges  of 
their  knives. 

The  style  in  which  Doughty  brings  before  us  a 
mirage  of  the  strange  wilderness  of  the  upland 
stony  deserts  of  Arabia,  a  land  of  rocky  lava  drifts 
girt  in  by  savage  crater  pits  and  interspersed  here 
and  there  with  green  valley  oases,  where  villages 
and  walled  towns  have  been  built  because  there, 
only  there  is  water, — the  style  by  which  Doughty 
communicates  to  us  the  strange  feeling  of  his  trav- 
eller's days  and  nights,  his  hourly  speculations 
and  agitations,  his  inner  strength  his  muttered 
doubts,  his  own  craft  and  purpose,  is  the  style  of  a 
consummate  master  of  English.  Many  are  the 
travellers  and  few  are  the  styles.  Palgrave's 
style  is  flat  and  colourless  and  tame  beside  Dough- 
ty's;  Burton's  style  is  ordinary,  vigorous,  com- 
monplace. Doughty  has  surely  succeeded  better 
than  any  other  English  traveller  in  fashioning  a 
style  and  forging  and  tempering  it  so  as  to  bring 
the  reader  into  intimate  contact  with  the  character 
[no] 


MR.    C.    M.    DOUGHTY 

of  the  land  he  describes,  while  contrasting  with  it 
artistically  the  traveller's  racial  spirit.  Doughty 
forges  and  smelts  words  as  only  a  learned  man  can; 
he  goes  back  to  the  Old  Testament  for  a  plain, 
smiting  simplicity  of  speech  ;  he  lifts  straight  from 
the  Arabic  the  names  of  the  creatures,  the  plants 
that  Arabia  has  fashioned  in  her  womb,  the  names 
for  the  weapons,  the  daily  objects,  the  slang  and 
the  oaths  that  are  in  the  mouth  of  the  Arab.  And 
into  this  rich  medley  of  idioms  he  mixes  the  old 
English  words,  the  Norse  words  he  loves  as  only 
a  cunning  craftsman  in  language  can.  He  is  an 
artist  therein,  for  the  main  vision  his  book  leaves 
on  the  mind  is  that  of  a  stubborn  latter-day  Norse- 
man (mixed  with  the  blood  of  an  Old  English 
cleric)  adventuring  forth  amid  the  quick-witted, 
fierce,  fanatical,  kindly  and  fickle  Arabians. 
Doughty' s  style  is  that  of  a  man  with  a  great  in- 
stinct for  the  shades  of  language;  his  vocabulary 
is  very  rich  and  racy.  If  there  be  a  spice  or  more 
of  affectation  in  his  speech,  we  welcome  it  as  a 
characteristic  ingredient  in  the  idiomatic  charac- 
ter of  the  whole. 

1902-1908 


[111] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

(b)        "ARABIA    DESERTA"    REDIVIVA  ^ 

The  wheel  has  come  full  circle  by  the  republi- 
cation in  its  entirety  of  this  great  travel  book, 
the  greatest  surely  in  the  English  language. 
Two  editions  of  a  great  classic  have  been  called 
for  in  thirty-three  years  I 

It  is  a  strange  history,  this  neglect  of  "Arabia 
Deserta,"  and  one  that  for  book  lovers  is  shadowed 
with  a  curious  irony.  The  original  edition,  pub- 
lished in  1888  by  the  Cambridge  Press,  though 
known  to  all  Arabic  scholars,  lay  long  on  the 
shelves  of  the  warehouse,  unregarded.  The  grudg- 
ing review  that  appeared  in  the  "Athenffium"  was 
a  masterpiece  of  the  reviewer's  art  of  suppression. 
My  curiosity  was  aroused  one  day  by  hearing 
from  Mr.  Sidney  Cockerell  that  William  Morris 
kept  the  book  by  his  bedside,  so  that  he  might  dip 
into  it  at  night,  and  refresh  himself  from  its  well 
of  noble,  archaistic  style.  I  procured  a  copy  and 
lost  myself  for  many  days  and  nights,  as  every 
reader  must,  wandering  with  Doughty  on  his 
lonely  and  perilous  adventuring  among  the  desert 
tribes, 

1  "Travels  in  Arabia  Deserta."  By  Charles  M.  Doughty. 
Introduction  by  T.  E.  Lawrence.  Two  vols.  Medici  Society 
and  Jonathan  Cape.     Nine  guineas. 

[112] 


MR.   C.   M.    DOUGHTY 

"Arabia  Deserta"  is  not  a  book :  it  is  a  continent. 
I  wrote  a  eulogy  on  the  book,  in  the  "Academy," 
nearly  twenty  years  ago,  a  eulogy  which  no  man  re- 
garded. Years  passed,  and  one  day  Mr.  Doughty, 
with  my  article  and  his  great  epic  "The  Dawn 
in  Britain"  in  his  hand,  appeared  in  the  publisher's 
office  in  which  I  was  then  working.  And  so  it  was 
that  the  abridged  edition,  "Wanderings  in  Arabia" 
appeared,  and  the  English  world  at  last  paid  a 
long-delayed  meed  of  tribute  to  our  greatest  travel- 
ler. But  still  no  publisher  was  wise  or  bold 
enough  to  reissue  that  king  book  in  its  entirety, 
which  just  before  1907  had  exhausted  the  first 
small  edition.  Nay,  "Arabia  Deserta"  would  still 
be  unprocurable  but  for  the  Great  War. 

The  book,  Colonel  Lawrence,  second  only  to 
Doughty  in  his  achievements  in  Arabia,  tells  us: 

"Arabia  Deserta,"which  had  been  a  great  joy  to  read, 
as  a  great  record  of  adventure  and  travel  (perhaps  the 
greatest  in  the  language),  and  the  great  picture-book  of 
nomad  life,  became  a  military  text  book,  and  helped  to 
guide  us  to  military  victory  in  the  East. 

It  is  said  that  the  War  Office  was  on  the  point 
of  reprinting  the  book  as  indispensable  to  officers 
shortly  before  the  unexpected  victory  in  1919 
crowned  our  arms.     In  one  aspect  this  is  touch- 

[113] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

ing,  and  no  tribute  could  well  be  more  grateful  to 
Doughty,  the  most  patriotic  of  Englishmen;  but 
in  another  aspect  that  of  our  interest  in  human- 
ity, white,  black,  or  brown,  and  of  our  natural 
pride  in  the  great  Englishman's  achievements, 
how  significant  it  is  that  it  needs  a  war,  and  all 
the  benefits  of  Imperial  loot,  to  spur  our  country- 
men to  passing  knowledge  of  a  masterpiece  of 
literature.  For  if  Colonel — I  mean  Mr. — Law- 
rence had  not  bestirred  himself  in  earnest,  one 
may  doubt  if  "Arabia  Deserta"  would  have  been 
republished  in  this  generation. 

And  the  irony  cuts  deeper.  While  the  road  to 
Persia  is  littered  with  derelict  British  barracks 
and  canteens  and  swimming-baths — the  aban- 
doned glories  of  Lord  Curzon's  policy — while  the 
British  name  is  blackened  throughout  Mesopota- 
mia by  our  perfidy  and  cruelty  to  the  natives,  to 
whom  we  pledged  our  faith.  Colonel  Lawrence 
tells  us: 

Doughty  was  the  first  Englishman  they  (the  Arabs) 
had  met.  He  predisposed  them  to  give  a  chance  to  other 
men  of  his  race  because  they  found  him  honourable  and 
good.  So  he  broke  a  road  for  his  religion.  He  was  fol- 
lowed by  Mr.  Wilfrid  Blunt  and  Miss  Gertrude  Bell, 
other  strong  personalities.     They  confirmed  the  desert  in 

[114] 


MR.    C.    M.    DOUGHTY 

its  view  of  Englishmen,  and  gave  us  a  privileged  position 
which  is  a  grave  responsibility  upon  all  who  follow  them. 
Thanks  to  them  an  Englishmen  finds  a  welcome  in  Ara- 
bia, and  can  travel,  not  indeed  comfortably,  for  it  is  a 
terrible  land,  but  safely  over  the  tracks  which  Doughty 
opened  with  such  pains.  No  country  has  been  more  for- 
tunate in  its  ambassadors.  We  are  accepted  as  worthy 
persons  unless  we  prove  ourselves  the  contrary  by  our 
own  misdoings.  This  is  no  light  monument  to  the  mem- 
ory of  a  man  who  stamped  so  clear  an  impression  of  his 
virtue  on  a  nomad  people  in  the  casual  journeyings  of  two 
years. — P.  xxvii. 

"They  gave  us  a  privileged  position  which  is 
a  grave  responsibility  upon  all  who  follow 
them"  I  Fortunatel)^  for  the  Arabians  no  oil  has 
been  located  hitherto  in  their  deserts!  And  if  it 
ever  be,  the  "mandates"  will  go  swiftly  forth 
among  the  Christian  Powers,  and  the  chiefs  of 
the  desert  tribesi  will  be  hanged  high  at  the  gates 
of  their  towns,  as  our  Indian  Army  satraps  have 
hanged  the  Mesopotamian  tribesmen. 

Colonel  Lawrence's  introduction  is  worthy  of 
this  king  book  among  travels.  He  testifies:  "The 
more  you  learn  of  Arabia,  the  more  you  find  in 
'Arabia  Deserta.'  The  more  you  travel  there  the 
greater  your  respect  for  the  insight,  judgment,  and 
artistry  of  the  author.  ...  It  is  the  first  and  in- 
I"5] 


FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

dispensable  work  upon  the  Arabs  of  the  desert.  .  . 

"The  book  has  no  date  and  can  never  grow  old. 
Every  student  of  Arabia  wants  a  copy.  .  .  . 
Doughty's  completeness  is  devastating.  There 
is  nothing  we  could  take  away,  little  we  could 
add.  He  took  all  Arabia  for  his  province,  and 
has  left  to  his  successors  only  the  poor  part  of 
specialists.  .  .  .  The  realism  of  the  book  is  com- 
plete. ...  It  is  a  book  which  begins  power- 
fully, written  in  a  style  which  has  apparently 
neither  father  nor  son,  so  closely  wrought,  so 
tense,  so  just  in  its  words  and  phrases,  that  it 
demands  a  hard  reader." 

And  this  king  book  lay  upon  the  shelves  of  the 
Cambridge  Press  in  practical  oblivion  for  sixteen 
years!  The  price  for  possessing  it  has  trebled 
since  1888.  You  must  pay  for  it  now  the  price 
of  a  woman's  fashionable  French  hat  or  a  suit 
of  West  End  clothes,  or  of  fifteen  bottles  of 
watered  whisky.  One  wonders  how  many  rich, 
patriotic  Englishmen  will  find  the  book  "beyond 
their  means."  After  all  it  is  only  a  book!  Only 
a  book  by  a  great  Englishman,  though  it  holds 
within  it,  as  Colonel  Lawrence  says:  "All  the 
desert,  its  hills  and  plains,  the  lava  fields,  the 
villages,  the  tents,  the  men  and  animals  .  .  . 
the  true  Arabia,  the  land  with  its  smells  and  dirt, 
[u6] 


MR.   C.   M.   DOUGHTY 

as  well  as  its  nobility  and  freedom."  Still,  for 
your  rich  profiteering,  patriotic  Englishman,  it 
is  only  a  book. 

1921 

(c)     MR.    DOUGHTY'S    poems 

A  curious  study  might  be  made  of  the  early 
efforts  of  men  of  genius  whose  inborn  forces  have 
long  struggled  with  an  environment  of  aesthetic 
fashions  and  traditions  to  which  they  are  hostile. 
Luckily,  genius  is  like  a  winged  seed  which  floats, 
on  favouring  airs,  past  many  obstacles  till  it  finds 
a  congenial  soil  to  nurture  it,  and  Mr.  Doughty's 
was  determined  by  his  early  wanderings  in  Arabia, 
and  by  his  ambition,  conceived  in  youth,  to  create 
for  his  own  country  a  national  epic,  which,  in 
style  and  texture  of  language,  should  derive  from 
the  ancient  roots  and  stem  of  the  English  tongue, 
and  not  from  those  latter-day  grafts,  which  to  the 
critical  taste  of  some,  bear  doubtful  fruit.  Of 
the  language  of  "Travels  in  Arabia  Deserta"  a 

1  The  Dawn  in  Britain.  By  Charles  M.  Doughty.  Vols, 
i-vi.     London:     Duckworth  and  Co.,  1906. 

Adam  Cast  Forth.  A  sacred  Drama.  By  Charles  M. 
Doughty.     London.     Duckworth  and  Co.,  1908. 

The  Cliffs.  By  Charles  M.  Doughty.  London.  Duckworth 
and  Co.,  1909. 

[i>7] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

critic,  Mr.  Hogarth,  has  said,  "It  has  the  precision 
and  inevitableness  of  great  style  ...  it  must  be 
allowed  that  archaistic  effort  sustained  by  Dough- 
ty's  genius  through  more  than  a  thousand  pages 
of  his  "Arabia  Deserta,"  is  curiously  in  keep- 
ing .  .  .  with  the  primeval  society  he  set  himself 
to  describe," 

The  implication  here  that  our  modern  literary 
language  cannot  boast  of  a  style  of  austere  force 
is  just.  Modern  English,  which  has  long  shed 
Imndreds  of  simple  idioms  and  a  great  part  of  the 
racy  vocabulary  that  was  in  familiar  use  from 
Chaucer's  to  Shakespeare's  time,  exhales  the  uncer- 
tain atmosphere  of  a  complicated  civilization.  It 
is,  therefore,  folly  in  the  critic  to  complain  that 
the  linguistic  horizon  of  Mr.  Doughty's  epic  is  not 
bounded  by  the  practice  of  our  poets  of  today  or 
of  yesterday.  The  subject  itself  precludes  it. 
The  extraordinary  feat  of  conjuring  up  before  our 
eyes  the  struggle  of  the  Celtic  and  Teutonic  aris- 
tocracies of  barbaric  Europe  against  the  Roman 
arms  (b.  c,  450-A.  d.  50)  is  one  that  only  a  great 
genius,  confident  in  its  resources,  could  have 
planned  and  achieved.  But  it  could  not  have 
been  accomplished  before  our  period.  Though 
many  generations  of  scholars  and  students  have 
cultivated  with  assiduity  the  fields  of  archiieologv, 

[118] 


MR.    DOUGHTY'S    POEMS 

philology,  and  folklore,  the  right  of  the  latter  to 
rank,  as  exact  sciences  is  but  recent.  Mr. 
Doughty  has  surveyed  this  enormous  held  of  re- 
search, and  the  fabric  of  his  epic  is  built  upon  the 
knowledge  of  the  life  of  our  barbaric  forbears, 
unearthed  by  the  labours  of  a  great  band  of  schol- 
ars. As  for  the  language  in  which  the  vision  of 
"The  Dawn  in  Britain"  is  embodied,  it  is  obvious 
that  there  is  no  instrument  in  the  whole  armoury 
of  our  English  poets  ancient  or  modern,  that 
could  fittingly  have  moulded  it.  A  new 
weapon  had  to  be  forged,  and  Mr.  Doughty's 
blank  verse,  concentrated  and  weighty,  great  in  its 
sweep  and  range,  rich  in  internal  rhythms,  if 
sometimes  labouring,  and  sometimes  broken,  is 
the  product  of  his  theme,  a  theme  of  heroic  strife, 
vast  and  rugged  as  a  mountain  range,  titanic  in 
breadth  and  in  savage  depth  of  passion.  As  a 
critic,  Mr.  Edward  Thomas  says,  "The  test  of  a 
style  is  its  expressiveness  and  its  whole  effect" 
and  one  might  as  well  criticize  what  Mr. 
Doughty's  style  expresses  as  the  style  itself,  e.  g., 
the  face  of  the  primeval  landscape  with  its  dense 
forests  and  boggy  valleys,  marshlands  and  fens, 
the  tribal  settlements  in  stockaded  villages,  raths 
and  dunes,  and  rude  walled  towns,  or  the  battles, 
sieges,  tumults,  famines,  the  shock  of  racial  in- 

["9] 


FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

vasions,  the  dynastic  customs  and  religious  rites, 
the  poetic  myths  and  legends,  the  marriage  feasts, 
and  funeral  ceremonies  of  this  barbaric  civiliza- 
tion in  all  its  uncouth  wildness  and  rude  dignity. 
The  heroic  grandeur  and  strange  wild  beauty  of 
this  great  pageant  of  life,  resolving  swiftly  into 
new  changing  forms,  are  conveyed  to  us  in  a  style 
that  makes  no  concessions  to  the  indolent  reader. 
One  of  his  critics,  Mr.  R.  C.  Lehmann,  has 
asked,  "What  reason  was  there,  either  in  the  na- 
ture of  things,  or  in  the  purpose  of  the  book,  which 
could  compel  Mr.  Doughty  to  this  violent  excess 
of  archaism,  to  this  spasmodic  arrangement  of 
truncated  phrases  with  all  their  baldness  of  expres- 
sion and  strenuous  inversion  of  order'?"  The  an- 
swer to  this  is,  simply,  that  you  cannot  make  an 
omelette  without  breaking  eggs,  and  that  if  the 
style  can  bring  before  us  by  direct  poetic  images 
the  mysterious  forces  of  elemental  nature,  the 
clash  of  nations  in  conflict,  the  physical  character 
and  spiritual  breath  of  a  thousand  varied  scenes, 
that  style,  with  its  "obscurities"  "inversions," 
"baldness,"  "mannerisms"  "truncated  phrases" 
and  what  not,  is  a  style  of  epic  greatness.  So  un- 
erring is  the  force  of  the  author's  imagination,  so 
mysterious  his  creative  insight  that  in  the  whole 
twenty-four  books  of  his  epic  there  is  not  a  single 
[120] 


MR.    DOUGHTY'S   POEMS 

event  narrated  that  we  do  not  accept  and  believe 
in  as  implicity  as  though  it  had  passed  before  our 
eyes.  All  has  the  inevitableness  and  actu- 
ality of  nature.  And  we  dare  not  question  the 
artistic  method,  even  in  the  broken  waters  of  trun- 
cated phrases  and  obscurities,  or  in  the  prosaic 
stretches  of  the  narrative,  any  more  than  we  can 
hope  to  smooth  away  the  lines  from  a  man's  face 
and  yet  retain  its  character. 

Mr.  Doughty' s  verse  raises  questions  of  vital  in- 
terest today  when  so  many  modem  poets  by  their 
predilection  for  the  rarefied  moods  of  cloistered 
emotions,  by  their  retreat  into  aesthetic  sanctuaries 
imd  inner  shrines,  shut  out  the  common  air  and 
life,  and  abandon  character  and  gesture  in  order 
to  create  cunningly  carven  images.  Poetry,  al- 
ways a  matter  of  high  artifice,  grows  pale  and  lan- 
guid as  a  plant  which  is  sheltered  indoors  from  the 
forces  of  wind  and  weather.  Without  the  con- 
stant revolt  of  the  great,  free  spirits  who  are  the 
innovating  forces  in  art,  against  the  petrifying 
tendency  of  tradition,  we  know  that  the  fairway  of 
the  main  channel  would  gradually  be  silted  up  by 
time.  Mediaeval  Irish  poetry,  for  example,  after 
its  fresh  and  forceful  youth,  stagnated  for  cen- 
turies, sinking  to  the  level  of  a  mere  game  of  skill 
in    metrical    technique.     Mr.    Doughty's    verse 

[121] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

shows  life,  movement  and  interplay  of  character 
and  spontaneous  force,  in  a  measure  that  tran- 
scends the  example  of  all  but  the  great  immortals. 
Its  rugged,  strange,  uncouth  beauty,  repellent  at 
first  sight,  bears  with  it  an  air  of  actuality  that 
soon  weakens  a  reader's  taste  for  the  smoother, 
more  graceful  styles  of  verse.  The  strangeness 
of  the  achievement  is  that  the  author  has  pre- 
served the  flow  and  stress  of  real  life  on  the  scale 
of  epic  grandeur.  Even  Csesar  Claudius,  the  un- 
ready epicurean,  trembling  at  the  din  of  battle, 
shows  that  mysterious  vitality  which  the  great 
artists  always  stamp  upon  their  portraits.  It 
is  the  spirit  of  a  man,  the  genius  of  the  people  or 
place,  the  essence  and  atmosphere  of  things 
visible  and  invisible  that  M'r.  Doughty  paints 
with  intensity  and  force,  and  with  such  breadth 
and  freedom  of  handling  as  to  impair,  by  com- 
parison, creations  of  admirable  artifice  but  of 
less  character.  Examine,  for  example,  this 
speech  of  Csesar  Claudius  at  the  banquet  of 
Asiaticus,  his  host,  and  note  how  the  genius  of 
Roman  civilization,  its  imperial  outlook  and  the 
flavour  of  patrician  luxury  are  all  here  together 
in  twenty  lines: 

Good  is  this  loaf,  of  sheaf  reaped  by  our  soldiers ! 
We  also  some  will  fraught  in  ship,  to  Rome. 
[122] 


MR.    DOUGHTY'S    POEMS 

Which   grind   shall    Briton    captives,,  and    thereof 

Be  loaves  set,  on  all  tables,  in  Rome's  streets; 

What  day  to  Rome's  citizens,  we  shall  make, 

(As  erewhile  divus  Julius),  triumph-feast. 

Thy  maidens,   Friend,   be   like  to  marble   nymphs, 

Of  Praxiteles,  fecht  to  Rome,  those  which 

Stand  in  impluvium  of  our  golden  house: 

Swift  Cynthia's  train,  with  silver  bows ;  that  seem. 

And  rattling  quivers,  on  their  budded  breasts. 

Leaping  their  high  round  flanks,  on  crystal  feet, 

Follow,  with  loud  holloa !  the  chase  in  heaven. 

This,  which  beside  me,  my  Valerius,  hath 

So  bright  long  hair-locks  like  ringed  wiry  gold, 

And  gracious  breast,  whereon  sit  wooing  doves, 

Meseems  that  famous  Cnidian  Aphrodite, 

Great  goddess  mother  of  our  Julian  house ; 

Whereby  now  Thermae  Agrippae  are  adorned. 

What  damsel !  mix  me  cup  of  Lesbian  wine ; 
And  give,  with  kiss  of  Venus'  lips,  of  love. 
Ha,  these,  that  skill  not  of  our  Latin  tongue, 
Hold  scorn  of  Caesar,  Asiaticus ! 

And,  again,  in  the  following  passage,  note  how 
the  wind  of  shameful  adversity  that  Caractacus 
knew  when  led  through  the  streets  of  Rome  at 
Claudius'  triumph,  blows  in  our  face  so  that  we 
behold  him  with  our  eyes  of  the  Roman  populace, 
and  feel  with  the  sad  and  scornful  hearts  of  the 
captive  Britons: 

[123] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

Loud  trumpets  sound!     Much  insolent  concourse  is 
Descended,  in  Rome's  ways  of  mingled  speech; 
(For  flow  the  world's  offscourings  now  by  Rome, 
Wherein  are  infinite  slaves  of  many  wars.) 
Stand  on  all  foot-ways,  Rome's  proud  citizens. 
Ranged ;  'bove  when  framed  be  scaffolds,  in  long 

rows; 

Where  sit  patricians,  and  Rome's  senators ; 
And  ambassades,  with  purpled  magistrates ; 
Women  look  proudly  on  from  every  porch. 
Stairs,  pillared  temples.     Other  throng  house-tops ; 
Where  great  Britannic  King,  Caractacus, 
Their  Sacred  Way  along,  towards  his  death. 
Shall  pass.     He  cometh,  lo,  chained,   like  savage 

beast ! 

Afoot.     With  him  fares   Embla;   and   twixt   them 

both. 

Their  little  daughter  traces,  Maid-of-Kent. 
His  brethren  peers,  come  after,  in  Rome-street. 
As  on  Jugurtha  bound,  all  Romans  gaze 
On  thee;  (with  ribald  jests  they  mock  thy  looks,) 
Sword-of-the-gods,  divine  Caractacus ! 
Great  King  Cunobelin's  scythe-cart  then  is  seen ; 
Wherein  war-kings  of  Britain  wont  to  ride. 
It  draw  forth,  teamed,  six  tall  young  noble  Britons, 
War-captives !  and  winged  dragon  seemed  the  beam ; 
With  vermeil  shining  scales.     The  bilge  is  full 
Of  dints  ;  yet  seen  distained  with  battle-blood  ! 
The  wheels  seem  running  eagle's  claws,  of  bronze. 
And  men  those  barbare  brazen  hooks  behold, 
[124] 


MR.    DOUGHTY'S    POEMS 

Whereon  were  wont  be  hanged,  in  every  field 
The  off-hewed  polls,  of  chief  slain  ones  of  Romans ! 
Was  taken  that  royal  cart  at  Camulodunum  ; 
Wherein  is  reared  now  of  Cunobelin, 
Broad  sun-bright  targe,  and  hauberk  of  Manannan, 
The  shrieking  Briton  axe-tree,  of  hard  bronze 
Rumbles,  not  washt,  with  scab  of  battle-dust. 
And  rotten  gore,  on,  dread,  through  mighty  Rome ; 
And  thereon  gazing,  shrink  the  hearts  of  Romans ; 
That  fear  again  the  antique  Gauls    of  Brennus ! 
Thereafter,  four-wheel  Briton  chariots  drawn 
Are.     March  tall  young  men  captives  of  the  Isle, 
Beside;  upholding  barbare  glittering  ensigns. 
Those    wains    pass    forth,    behanged    with    painted 
shields, 

Of  island  peoples  vanquished  in  the  wars. 

Gleam  war-horns,  in  the  first,  and  long  iron  glaives : 

Bound,  in  the  next,  lo,  thraves  of  bronze  head  spears. 

Passeth  forth  god-like,  pale,  Caractacus, 

(Whose  only  arm  a  nations  shelter  was!) 

Betrayed,  not  taken,  in  wars ;  midst  dog-faced  press. 

The  Briton  King,  erect,  magnanimous. 

Vouchsafes  not  them  behold.     The  stings  have  pierced. 

Of  ire,  his  noble  breast;  proud  sorrow  slays. 

On  Embla's  looks,  long-time,  all  Romans  gaze ! 

Though  she,  from  prison-pit,  came  lean  and  wan ; 

So  fair  a  woman's  face  is  none  in  Rome. 

Her  tresst  locks  part  are  wounden,  like  to  crown. 

Upon  her  noble  front ;  part,  backlong  hang, 

Like  veil  of  gold.     She,  sad-faced  Britain's  queen. 

[125] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

Hath  a  royal  majesty,  in  her  countenance! 
Like  snowdrop  pale,  (the  innocent  oppressed!) 
iTheir  maiden  child,  she  leads  on  by  the  hand." 

The  noble  simplicity  of  the  style  here  bears 
with  it  the  atmosphere  of  inevitability,  of  things 
seen,  suffered  and  lived  through.  We  must  re- 
peat, however,  that  the  appeal  of  the  style  lies  in 
the  cumulative  effect  of  the  whole  image;  and 
what  wealth  there  is  in  the  strange  spiritual 
depths  of  this  human  ocean!  To  take  one  Book 
only  out  of  the  twenty- four :  Book  XX.  unfolds 
the  shipwreck  of  Britain's  fortunes,  the  agony  of 
Caractacus,  his  night  frenzy  in  the  grave-fields, 
his  capture  by  the  plotted  treachery  and  subtle 
spells  of  Cartismandua,  the  harlot  queen,  the 
madness  and  punishment  of  her  paramour,  Prince 
Vellocatus,  the  transportation  of  Caractacus  and 
his  queen  overseas,  and  their  incarceration  in  the 
prison  pit  of  Servius  Tullius.  Another  perhaps 
more  amazing  feat  of  the  poet's  imagination  is 
the  wild  passage  in  which  Belisama,  the  British 
goddess,  incites  the  warrior  Camulus  to  save  Car- 
actacus. We  know  nothing  in  literature  like  this, 
in  its  astounding  insight  into  the  conceptions  of  a 
primitive  society. 

It  is  not  by  subject,  not  by  his  form  merely,  that 
we  must  rank  a  poet,  but  bv  the  original  creat've 
[126]' 


MR.    DOUGHTY'S    POEMS 

force  and  beauty  of  his  whole  vision.  In  "The 
Cliffs,"  a  modern  drama  of  the  invasion  of  Eng- 
land by  a  fleet  of  Dreadnoughts,  and  aerial  ships 
of  a  hostile  European  Power,  Mr.  Doughty  shows 
as  great  imaginative  insight  in  his  treatment  of  an 
old  shepherd,  a  Crimean  veteran  walking  the 
shore  by  night,  and  of  the  strife  of  factitious  poli- 
ticians in  Parliament,  as  in  his  picture  of  Caracta- 
cus  in  Rome.  The  sharp,  homely  pathos  of  the 
veteran's  memories  of  the  trenches,  the  biting 
satiric  invective  and  fantastic  mercilessness  of  the 
picture  of  the  politicians,  the  aerial  delicacy  and 
poetic  humour  of  the  elves'  marriage,  all  this  is 
great'  poetry,  poetry  that  seizes  on  the  spiritual 
essences  of  human  life  and  feeling  and  weaves 
them  into  an  original  tissue  of  rich  imagery. 
We  do  not  claim  that  "The  Cliffs"  is  an  achieve- 
ment comparable  with  "The  Dawn  in  Britain." 
"The  Cliffs"  is  a  poem  written  with  a  patriotic 
purpose,  and  wherever  the  purpose  becomes 
obtrusive,  as  in  certain  speeches  of  the  in- 
vading foreigners  on  the  Anglian  cliff,  and  in 
the  last  sixty  pages  of  the  poem  describing  how 
news  is  brought  of  the  repulse  and  retreat  of  the 
invading  foe,  winding  up  with  the  patriotic  Te 
Deum  of  "Sancta  Britannia"  which  is  sung  by 
the   English   villagers,    the   vicar   and   all   good 

[127] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

Englishmen,  we  drop  abruptly  from  poetry  to 
prose,  and  the  effect  is  the  more  marked,  since 
it  is  not  the  details  that  are  unfit  for  poetic  treat- 
ment, but  the  vision  that  has  grown  ordinary  in 
spirit  and  imagery  through  over  accentuation  of 
the  national,  patriotic  purpose.  Extraordinary 
in  its  marred,  imperfect  achievement  as  is  "The 
Cliffs,"  one  has  only  to  place  it  beside  "Adam 
Cast  Forth"  to  see  that  the  latter  in  imaginative 
intensity  and  creative  loftiness  is  the  crown  of 
the  poet's  creations.  In  sublimity,  in  native 
austerity,  in  the  qualities  of  elemental  awe  and 
pity  the  sacred  drama  of  the  earthly  fate  of 
Adam  and  Eve,  after  they  have  been  cast  forth 
from  Eden,  vies  with  the  Miltonic  drama.  The 
Judseo-Arabian  legend  on  which  "Adam  Cast 
Forth"  is  founded  is,  no  doubt,  a  product  of 
the  same  deserts  from  which  the  awful  Monothe- 
ism of  the  Bible  sprang.  After  the  whirling  fiery 
blast  of  Sarsar,  the  rushing  tempest  of  God's  wrath 
has  reft  Adam  and  Adama  [Eve]  apart,  Adam 
is  hurled  over  sharp  rocks,  and  buffeted  through 
thickets  of  thorns  to  desolate  Harisuth,  the  swel- 
tering land  of  fiery  dust  and  burning  stones,  a 
sun-beat  wilderness;  where  he  lies,  blackened  and 
sightless,  fed  by  ravens  for  a  hundred  years, 
bowed  to  the  scorching  earth,  in  agony  of  bruised 

[128] 


MR.    DOUGHTY'S   POEMS 

flesh,  piteous  and  groaning.  The  drama  opens 
with  the  appearance  of  Ezriel,  the  Angel  of  the 
Lord's  Face,  who  tells  of  the  Lord's  mercy.  Now 
to  the  blinded  man  comes  Adama,  whom  he  recog- 
nizes by  her  voice,  and  entreats  that  she  will  bind 
their  bodies  together  so  that  he  may  not  lose  her 
again.  The  originality  and  exquisite  quality  of 
the  poem  lie  in  the  contrast  between  the  naked 
sublimity  of  the  awful  landscape,  this  waterless, 
sun-blackened,  high,  waste  wilderness  over  which 
broods  the  Wrath  of  God  of  the  Hebraic  con- 
ception, and  the  pitiable  defencelessness  of  the 
"naked  and  simple  fieshling  Adam."  We  have 
said  that  "Adam  Cast  Forth"  vies  in  sublimity 
with  Milton's  epic,  and  certainly  not  only  is  the 
picture  of  primeval  Arabian  landscape  wrought 
with  an  austere  force  that  no  poet  could  command 
who  had  not  himself  known  the  horrors  of  its 
savage  desolation,  but  the  figure  of  Adam  in  ele- 
mental simplicity  and  force  of  outline,  "mixt  of 
the  base  ferment  of  beasts'  flesh,"  and  "the  breath 
of  the  Highest,"  is  both  a  grander  and  more 
humanly  credible  "world  father"  than  the 
scholastic  creation  of  Milton.  In  its  dramatic 
development  "Adam  Cast  Forth"  shows  the  inevi- 
tability of  great  art.  A  Voice  proclaims  that 
the  years  of  Adam's  punishment  are  ended,  and 
[129] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

Adama  guides  her  helpmate  to  a  palmgrove,  where, 
bathing  in  a  spring,  he  recovers  sight  and  strength. 
To  prove  their  hearts,  "Whether,  indeed,  ye  will 
obey  His  Voice,"  Adam  and  Adama  are  bidden 
to  leave  the  valley  of  the  Lord's  Rest  and  jour- 
ney perilously  through  Harisuth,  the  Land  of 
the  Lord's  Curse.  The  narrative  of  their  tor- 
menting march  and  augmented  sufferings  among 
the  glowing  crags  of  this  vast  waste  of  desolation 
is  inspired  by  a  deep  tenderness  and  pity  for  hu- 
man sorrow,  born  of  an  extreme  sensitiveness  uni- 
ted to  a  natural  austerity  of  vision.  What  is  to  be 
remarked  in  the  character  of  all  our  author's  works 
is  this  dualism  of  mind  which  penetrates  into  the 
spirit  of  all  harsh  and  terrible  forces  in  nature,  and 
on  the  other  hand  sheds  mild,  beneficent  and  heal- 
ing rays  of  loving  kindness. 

But  we  cannot  hope  here  to  indicate  more  than 
hastily  the  essential  characteristics  of  Mr.  Dough- 
ty's  genius.  And  it  is  vexatious  for  our  immediate 
purpose  that  in  his  poems  every  part  is  so  subor- 
dinate to  the  effect  of  the  whole  that  to  separate 
a  passage  from  the  context  is  as  though  we  were  to 
break  away  a  portion  of  a  limb  from  a  statue.  The 
attentive  reader  may,  however,  judge  from  the  few 
lines  subjoined,  the  archaic  grandeur  of  "Adam 
[130] 


MR.    DOUGHTY'S   POEMS 

Cast  Forth,"  a  poem  that  in  simplicity  and  force 
stands  beside  the  great  poems  of  the  antique  world : 

Autumn. 

Earth's    fruit    hangs    ruddy   on    the   weary   bough. 
In  all  the  fallow  field,  the  bearded  herb, 
Stands   sere   and   ripened   seed :   fall   russet   leaves, 
Cumbering  clear  brooks,  which  bitter  flow  thereof. 

Strife. 
(Adam  speaks  his  vision.) 

Ah,  ah.  Lord, 

I  see,  in  bands,  Lord  God !  men  with  men,  strive : 

As  yester  we  the  murmuring  honey-flies 

Have  seen  'mongst  the  wild  cliffs,  for  their  sweet 
nests. 

And  full  of  teen  were  their  vext  little  breasts. 

Ah,  and  beat  those  down  each  other,  to  the  ground! 

And  blood   is  on   their  staves,  ah   and  sharp  flint 
stones ! 

But  Lord!  when  shall  these  things  be*? 

1908 


[131] 


OSTROVSKY'S    "THE    STORM 


OSTROVSKY'S  "THE  STORM" 

UP  to  the  years  of  the  Crimean  War  Rus- 
sia was  always  a  strange,  uncouth  riddle  to 
the  European  consciousness.  It  would  be 
an  interesting  study  to  trace  back  through  the  last 
three  centuries  the  evidence  of  the  historical 
documents  that  our  forefathers  have  left  us  when 
they  were  brought  face  to  face,  through  missions, 
and  commerce,  with  the  fantastic  life,  as  it 
seemed  to  them,  led  by  the  Muscovite.  But  in 
any  chance  record  we  may  pick  up,  from  the  re- 
ports of  a  seventeenth  century  embassy  down  to 
the  narrative  of  an  early  nineteenth  century  travel- 
ler, the  note  always  insisted  on  is  that  of  all  the 
outlandish  civilizations,  queer  manners  and  cus- 
toms of  Europeans,  the  Russians'  were  the  queer- 
est and  those  which  stood  furthest  removed  from 
the  other  nations'.  And  this  sentiment  has  pre- 
vailed today,  side  by  side  with  the  better  under- 
standing we  have  gained  of  Russia.  Nor  can 
this  conception,  generally  held  among  us,  which 
is  a  half  truth,  be  removed  by  personal  contact 

[•35] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

or  mere  objective  study;  for  example,  of  the  in- 
numerable memoirs  published  on  the  Crimean 
War,  it  is  rare  to  find  one  that  gives  us  any  real 
insight  into  the  nature  of  the  Russian.  And 
the  conception  itself  can  only  be  amended  and 
enlarged  by  the  study  of  the  Russian  mind  as 
it  expresses  itself  in  its  own  literature.  The 
mind  of  the  great  artist,  of  whatever  race  he 
springs,  cannot  lie.  From  the  works  of  Thack- 
eray and  George  Eliot  in  England  and  Turgenev 
and  Tolstoy  in  Russia,  a  critic  penetrates  into 
the  secret  places  of  the  national  life,  where 
all  the  clever  objective  pictures  of  foreign  critics 
must  lead  him  astray.  Ostrovsky's  drama,  "The 
Storm,"  here  translated  for  the  English  reader,^ 
is  a  good  instance  of  this  truth.  It  is  a  revelation 
of  the  old-fashioned  Muscovite  life  from  the  in- 
side^ and  Ostrovsky  thereby  brings  us  in  closer 
relation  to  that  primitive  life  than  was  in  the 
power  of  Tolstoy  or  Goncharov,  or  even  Gogol  to 
bring  us.  These  great  writers  have  given  us 
admirable  pictures  of  the  people's  life  as  it  ap- 
peared to  them  at  the  angle  of  the  educated  West- 
ernized Russian  mind;  but  here  in  "The  Storm"  is 
the  atmosphere  of  the  little  Russian  town,  with  its 

1  "The  Storm"  by  Ostrovsky.     Translated  by  Constance  Gar- 
nett.     London,  1899. 

[136] 


OSTROV  SKY'S     "THE     STORM" 

primitive  inhabitants,  merchants,  and  workpeople, 
an  atmosphere  untouched,  unadulterated  by  the 
ideas  ot  any  exterior  European  influence.  It  is 
the  Russia  of  Peter  the  Great  and  Catherine's 
time,  the  Russian  patriarchal  family  life  that 
has  existed  for  hundreds  of  years  through  all  the 
towns  and  villages  of  Great  Russia,  that  lingers 
indeed  today  in  out-of-the-way  corners  of  the 
Empire,  though  now  invaded  and  much  broken 
up  by  modern  influences.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  very 
Muscovite  life  that  so  puzzled  our  forefathers, 
and  that  no  doubt  will  seem  strange  to  many 
English  readers.  But  the  special  triumph  of 
"The  Storm"  is  that  although  it  is  a  realistic 
picture  of  old-fashioned  Russian  patriarchal 
life,  it  is  one  of  the  deepest  and  simplest  psy- 
chological analyses  of  the  Russian  soul  ever  made. 
It  is  a  very  deep  though  a  very  narrow  analysis. 
Katerina,  the  heroine,  to  the  English  will  seem 
weak,  and  crushed  through  her  weakness;  but  to  a 
Russian  she  typifies  revolt,  freedom,  a  refusal 
to  be  bound  by  the  cruelty  of  life.  And  her  atti- 
tude, despairing  though  it  seems  to  us,  is  indeed 
the  revolt  of  the  spirit  in  a  land  where  Tolstoy's 
doctrine  of  non-resistance  is  the  logical  outcome 
of  centuries  of  serfdom  in  a  people's  history. 
The  merchant  Dikoy,  the  bully,  the  soft  charac- 

[137] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

terless  lover  Boris,  the  idealistic  religious  Kater- 
ina,  Kuligin  the  artisan,  and  Madame  Kabanova, 
the  tyrannical  mother,  all  these  are  true  national 
types,  true  Russians  of  the  changing  ages,  and 
the  counterparts  of  these  people  may  be  met  to- 
day, if  the  reader  takes  up  Tchehov's  tales. 
English  people  no  doubt  will  find  it  difficult  to 
believe  that  Madame  Kabanova  could  so  have 
crushed  Katerina's  life,  as  Ostrovsky  depicts. 
Nothing  indeed  is  so  antagonistic  to  English 
individualism  and  independence  as  is'  the  passiv- 
ity of  some  of  the  characters  in  "The  Storm." 
But  the  English  reader's  very  difficulty  in  this 
respect  should  give  him  a  clue  to  much  that 
has  puzzled  Europeans,  should  help  him  to 
penetrate  into  the  strangeness  of  Russian  polit- 
ical life,  the  strangeness  of  her  love  of  despotism. 
Only  in  the  country  that  produces  such  types 
of  weakness  and  tyranny  is  possible  the  fettering 
of  freedom  of  thought  and  act  that  we  have 
in  Russia  today.  Ostrovsky's  striking  analysis 
of  this  fatalism  in  the  Russian  soul  will  help 
the  reader  to  understand  the  unending  struggle 
in  Russia  between  the  enlightened  European- 
ized  intelligence  of  the  few,  and  the  apathy 
of  the  vast  majority  of  Russians  who  are  dis- 
inclined to  rebel  against  the  crystallized  conditions 

[138] 


OSTROVSKY'S     "THE     STORM" 

of  their  lives.  Whatever  may  be  strange  and 
puzzling  in  "The  Storm"  to  the  English  mind, 
there  is  no  doubt  that  the  Russians  hail  the  pic- 
ture as  essentially  true.  The  violence  of  such 
characters  as  Madame  Kabanova  and  Dikoy  may 
be  weakened  today  everywhere  by  the  gradual 
undermining  of  the  patriarchal  family  system  now 
in  progress  throughout  Russia,  but  the  picture 
is  in  essentials  a  criticism  of  the  national  life. 
On  this  point  the  Russian  critic  Dobroliubov, 
criticizing  "The  Storm,"  says:  "The  need  for 
justice,  for  respect  for  personal  rights,  this  is  the 
cry.  .  .  that  rises  up  to  the  ear  of  every  attentive 
reader.  Well,  can  we  deny  the  wide  application 
of  this  need  in  Russia'?  Can  we  fail  to  recognize 
that  such  a  dramatic  background  corresponds  with 
the  true  condition  of  Russian  society^  Take  his- 
tory, think  of  our  life,  look  about  you,  every- 
where you  will  find  justification  of  our  words. 
This  is  not  the  place  to  launch  out  into  historical 
investigation;  it  is  enough  to  point  out  that  our 
history  up  to  the  most  recent  times  has  not  fos- 
tered among  us  the  development  of  a  respect  for 
equity,  has  not  created  any  solid  guarantees  for 
personal  rights  and  has  left  a  wide  field  to 
arbitrary  tyranny  and  caprice." 

This  criticism  of  Dobroliubov's  was  written  in 
[139] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

i860,  the  date  of  the  play;  but  we  have  only  to 
look  back  at  the  internal  history  of  Russia  for  the 
last  thirty  years  to  see  that  it  too  "has  not  created 
any  solid  guarantees  for  personal  rights,  and  has 
left  a  wide  field  to  arbitrary  tyranny  and  caprice." 
And  here  is  Ostrovsky's  peculiar  merit,  that  he  has 
in  his  various  dramas  penetrated  deeper  than  any 
other  of  the  great  Russian  authors  into  one  of  the 
most  fundamental  qualities  of  the  Russian  nature 
— its  innate  fondness  for  arbitrary  power,  oppres- 
sion, despotism.  Nobody  has  drawn  so  power- 
fully, so  truly,  so  incisively  as  he,  the  type  of  the 
"samodour"  or  "bully,"  a  type  that  plays  a  lead- 
ing part  in  every  stratum  of  Russian  life.  From 
Turgenev  we  learn  more  of  the  reverse  side  of  the 
Russian  character,  its  lack  of  will,  tendency  to 
weakness,  dreaminess  and  passivity ;  and  it  is  this 
aspect  that  the  English  find  so  hard  to  understand, 
when  they  compare  the  characters  in  the  great 
Russian  novels  with  their  own  idea  of  Russia's 
formidable  power.  The  people  and  the  nation  do 
not  seem  to  correspond.  But  the  riddle  may  be 
read  in  the  co-existence  of  Russia's  internal  weak- 
ness and  misery  along  with  her  huge  force,  and 
the  immense  role  she  fills  as  a  civilizing  power. 
In  "The  Storm"  we  have  all  the  contradictory 
elements:  a  life  strongly  organized,  yet  weak 
[140] 


OSTROV  SKY'S     "THE     STORM" 

within;  strength  and  passivity,  despotism  and 
fatalism  side  by  side. 

The  author  of  the  "Storm,"  Alexander  Ostrov- 
sky  (born  in  Moscow  1823,  died  1886),  is 
acknowledged  to  be  the  greatest  of  the  Russian 
dramatists.  He  has  been  called  "a  specialist  in 
the  natural  history  of  the  Russian  merchant,"  and 
his  birth,  upbringing,  family  connections  and  vo- 
cations gave  him  exceptional  facilities  for  pene- 
trating into  the  life  of  that  class  which  he  was 
tlhe  first  to  put  into  Russian  literature.  His  best 
period  was  from  1850  to  i860,  but  all  his  work 
received  prompt  and  universal  recognition  from 
his  countrymen.  In  1859  Dobroliubov's  famous 
article,  "The  Realm  of  Darkness,"  appeared, 
analysing  the  contents  of  all  Ostrovsky's  dramas, 
and  on  the  publication  of  "The  Storm"  in  i860, 
it  was  followed  by  another  article  from  the  same 
critic,  "A  Ray  of  Light  in  the  Realm  of  Dark- 
ness," These  articles  were  practically  a  brief  for 
the  case  of  the  Liberals,  or  party  of  Progress, 
against  the  official  and  Slavophil  party.  Ostrov- 
sky's dramas  in  general  are  marked  by  intense 
sombreness,  biting  humour  and  merciless  realism. 
"The  Storm"  is  the  most  poetical  of  his  works, 
but  all  his  leading  plays  still  hold  the  stage. 

"The  Storm"  will  repay  a  minute  examination 

[141] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

by  all  who  recognize  that  in  England  today  we 
have  a  stage  without  art,  truth  to  life,  or  national 
significance.  There  is  not  a  single  superfluous 
line  in  the  play:  all  is  drama,  natural,  simple, 
deep.  There  is  no  falsity,  no  forced  situations,  no 
sensational  effects,  none  of  the  shallow  or  flashy 
caricatures  of  daily  life  that  our  heterogeneous 
public  demands.  All  the  reproach  that  lives  for 
us  in  the  word  theatrical  is  worlds  removed  from 
"The  Storm."  The  people  who  like  "farcical 
domedy"  and  social  melodrama^  and  "musical 
sketches"  will  find  "The  Storm"  deep,  forbidding 
and  gloomy.  The  critic  will  find  it  an  abiding 
analysis  of  a  people's  temperament.  The  reader 
will  find  it  literature. 

1899 


[142] 


MR.    D.    H.    LAWRENCE 


MR.  D.  H.  LAWRENCE  AND 
THE  MORALISTS 


THE  instinct  of  men  to  moralize  their  ac- 
tions, and  of  society  to  confine  in  a  theoret- 
ical network  of  ethical  concepts  the  whole 
heaving  mass  of  human  activities,  is  fundamental. 
The  suspicion  with  which  ethics  views  art — exem- 
plified by  Plato's  casting  of  the  poets  out  of  the 
Republic — indicates  men's  unwillingness  to  let 
this  framework  of  moral  rules  and  social  con- 
ventions (which  bulges  obligingly  this  way  and 
that  according  to  particular  requirements)  be 
challenged  by  cesthetic  representations  which  may 
invalidate  it.  Both  the  Governments  and  the 
"average  citizen"  are  never  quite  easy  about  the 
activities  of  the  artists  and  poets  who  are  likely  to 
be  innovating  forces.  Thus  a  Byron  or  a  Shelley 
may  suddenly  scatter  far  and  wide,  in  their  poems, 
the  seeds  of  the  French  Revolution;  or  an  Ibsen 
may  appear  whose  "Doll's  House"  may  under- 
mine the  bourgeois  conception  of  marriage;  or  a 
Tolstoy  may  arise,  whose  interpretation  of  Chris- 

[145] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

tian  ethics  may  threaten  the  structure  of  the  State. 
The  efforts  of  the  State  or  Society  to  stamp  as 
"immoral"  powerful  representations  of  life  often 
as  not  recoil  on  the  authorities'  heads, — as  in  the 
case  of  Flaubert's  "Madame  Bovary."  Since  the 
suppression  of  Mr.  D.  H.  Lawrence's  novel,  ''The 
Rainbow,"  last  year  in  unusual  circumstances, 
called  forth  a  weighty  testimonial  to  its  merits 
from  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett,  I  shall  not  here  com- 
ment on  the  case.  Certain  books  excite  the  ordin- 
ary mind  unduly,  and  it  was  the  unseemly  scandal 
made  over  "Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles"  and  "Jude 
the  Obscure"  that  brought  Thomas  Hardy  to  lay 
down  his  magic  wand  of  fiction.  In  glancing  at 
Mr.  Lawrence's  two  volumes  of  poems,  I  should 
like  to  indicate  why  his  talent  is  one  of  the  most 
interesting  and  uncompromising  literary  forces  of 
the  recent  years. 

Briefly,  he  is  the  poet-psychologist  of  instincts, 
emotions,  and  moods  that  it  is  needless  to  try  and 
moralize.  Society's  network  of  ethical  concepts 
is  constantly  challenged  by  the  spectacle  of  our 
passionate  human  impulses.  Take  the  spectacle 
of  two  armies  of  men  struggling  to  destroy  one 
another.  Society  moralizes  their  actions  by  the 
single  word  "patriotism,"  and  glorifies  slaughter 
by    emphasizing    their    "heroic"     virtues.     But 

[146] 


MR.    D.    H.    LAWRENCE 

other  artists,  such  asi  Tolstoy  and  Garschin,  arise 
whose  pictures  of  war  show  us  its  crimes  against 
Humanity. 

But  the  more  nakedly  and  vividly  does  the  pure 
artist  of  Mr.  Lawrence's  type  depict  the  slipping 
of  the  leash  which  holds  in  the  animal  impulses, 
and  the  more  he  catches  the  terror  of  scenes  of 
carnage,  the  more  does  the  ordinary  man  look 
askance  at  him.  Why?  Because  the  artist  has 
torn  aside  the  "idealistic"  veils  which  conceal  the 
depths  of  the  world  of  seething  passions.  But 
should  the  artist  stamp  with  a  terrible  beauty  the 
upheaval  of  these  elemental  emotions,  what  then"? 
The  moralists  will  be  very  wroth  with  him.  It  is 
difficult  to  moralize  the  beauty  of  passion  and  the 
leaping  fire  of  the  senses.  Accordingly,  the  moral- 
ists try  and  turn  the  flank  of  such  an  artist  by  as- 
serting either  that  his  work  is  without  "high 
ideals,"  or  that  the  sesthetic  representation  of  such 
sensations  is  not  art  of  "high  rank,"  or  that  it  has 
deleterious  effects  on  the  reader.  But  has  it  de- 
leterious effects  on  our  human  consciousness'?  I 
believe  that  the  true  answer  to  such  objectors — 
who  are,  today,  legion — is  that  they  do  both  litera- 
ture and  morals  a  grave  disservice  by  striving  to 
confine  esthetic  representations  within  too  narrow 
a  circle,  and  that  by  seeking  to  fetter  and  restrain 

[147] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

the  artist's  activities  they  cripple  art's  function  of 
deepening  our  consciousness  and  widening  our  rec- 
ognitions. If  the  Rev.  S.  P.  Rowe  has  his  place, 
so  also  has  Boccaccio.  We  must  not  forget  that 
the  moralists  have  always  special  ends  in  view,  and 
very  little  would  be  left  us  if  they  had  had  their 
will  in  every  age  and  could  today  truncate  and  lop 
and  maim  literary  and  aesthetic  classics  at  their 
pleasure.  Euripides  and  Aristophanes,  Rabelais, 
Moliere,  Voltaire,  Marlowe,  and  Shakespeare, 
Fielding,  Byron,  Shelley,  Keats,  and  Sterne, 
Flaubert,  Maupassant,  Baudelaire,  Verlaine, 
Whitman,  Tchehov,  Tolstoy  himself, — all  have 
been  condemned  and  charged  with  "immoral" 
tendencies  by  the  moralists,  who  may  be  an- 
swered shortly  "Your  conception  of  'the  good' 
is  too  narrow.  In  your  hands  aesthetic  delin- 
eations of  the  passions  would  become  tame  as 
domestic  fowls."  Thus  Art  would  thereby  lend 
itself  to  the  propagation  of  flat  untruth.  This, 
indeed,  is  what  frequently  happens  in  literature. 
Representations  of  life  are  over-idealized  or 
over-moralized,  as  the  "heroic"  aspects  of  War 
by  the  lyrical  poets;  and  another  class  of 
artists,  the  realists,  have  to  be  called  in  to 
redress  the  balance  and  paint  the  terrible,  bes- 
tial,   heart-rending    side,    which    the    European 

[148] 


MR.    D.    H.    LAWRENCE 

nations  are  experiencing  today.  And  as  with 
War  so  with  Love.  Mr.  Lawrence,  by  his  psy- 
chological penetration  into  love's'  self-regard- 
ing impulses  and  passionate  moods,  supplements 
our  "idealistic"  valuations  of  its  activities  and 
corrects  their  exaggeration  by  conventionalized 
sentiment.  The  "idealistic"  valuations  of  Love 
have  their  high  abiding  place  in  literature, 
unassailable  as  in  life;  but,  under  cover  of  their 
virtual  monopoly  of  our  Anglo-Saxon  attention, 
we  see  the  literary  field,  today,  covered  with 
brooding  swarms  of  sugary,  sentimental  erotics, 
artificial  in  feeling,  futile  and  feeble  and  false  as 
art.  I  am  not  concerned  here  to  stigmatize  these 
cheap  sentimental  sweets  that  cloy  and  vitiate  the 
public  palate,  but  to  point  out  that  their  universal 
propagation  coincides  with  a  veiled  hostility  to  the 
Beautiful,  and  the  consequent  impoverishment  of 
our  spiritual  life.  The  harmful  effects  of  the  over- 
development of  material  progress  with  its  code  of 
utilitarian  standards  is  shown  by  the  artificial  and 
parasitic  position  in  which  poetry  and  art  are  thrust 
in  the  modern  community.  Our  poets  and  artists 
are  kept,  so  to  say,  as  a  sect  of  dilettanti^  apart, 
ministering  to  scholarly  aetheticism  or  drawing- 
room  culture,  and  are  disregarded  in  the  central 
stir   and    heat   of   worldly   activities.     And   our 

[149] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

spiritual  life,  bound  up  and  entangled  in  the 
wheels  and  mechanism  of  our  worldly  interests, 
is  conscious  of  being  stunted,  of  being  cheated 
of  its  rightful  esthetic  enrichment.  And  the 
general  abasement  of  Art  in  public  eyes,  its  par- 
asitic and  artificial  status  run  parallel  with  that 
vulgar  aspersion  cast  on  "the  life  of  the  senses," 
that  is,  of  our  sensuous  perceptions,  with  the  im- 
plication that  the  latter  are  somehow  or  other 
divisible  from  our  "spiritual"  life.^  Which  is 
absurd. 

Mr.  Lawrence  in  his  two  volumes,  "Love  Poems, 
and  Others"  and  "Amores,"  comes  today  to  redress 
the  balance.  As  a  poet  he  rehabilitates  and  sets 
before  us,  as  a  burning  lamp,  passion — a  word 
which,  in  the  sense  of  ardent  and  tumultuous  de- 
sire, has  almost  shed  to  the  vulgar  mind  its  origi- 
nal, enrooted  implication  of  suffering.  His  love 
poems  celebrate  the  cry  of  spirit  to  flesh  and  flesh 
to  spirit,  the  hunger  and  thrill  and  tumult  of  love's 
desires  in  the  whole  whirling  circle  of  its  impetus 
from  flame  to  ashes,  its  swift  reaching  out  to  the 
anguished  infinity  of  warring  nature, — his  love 

1  In  "A  History  of  American  Literature  since  1870,"  Prof. 
F.  L.  Pattee  writes:  "Beauty  to  Keats  is  only  that  which 
brings  delight  to  the  senses  ...  he  turned  in  disgust  from  the 
England  about  him  ...  to  the  world  of  sensuous  delight  where 
selfishly  he  might   swoon    away  in   a   dream  of  beauty." — ! 

['50] 


MR.    D.    H.    LAWRENCE 

poems,  I  say,  restore  to  passion  the  creative  rapture 
that  glows  in  the  verse  of  Keats.  And  his  spirit- 
ual synthesis  of  passion's  leaping  egoism,  its  revolt 
against  finite  ties  and  limitations,  its  shuddering 
sense  of  inner  disharmonies  and  external  revul- 
sions, its  winged  delight  in  its  own  motion,  declare 
its  superior  intensity  of  vital  energy  to  the  poetry 
of  most  of  his  English  contemporaries.  I  do  not 
wish  to  exaggerate  the  qualities  of  Mr.  Lawrence's 
verse.  His  range  of  mood  is  very  limited,  his  tech- 
nique is  hasty,  his  vision  turns  inward,  self-cen- 
tred; but  in  concentration  of  feeling,  in  keenness, 
one  might  almost  say  in  fierceness  of  sensation,  he 
seems  to  issue  from  those  tides  of  emotional  energy 
which  surge  in  the  swaying  ocean  of  life.  Shall 
we  say  that  the  source  of  his  power  is  this  quiver- 
ing fire  of  intensity,  which  like  a  leaping  flame 
at  night  in  a  garden  throws  back  the  darkness  in  a 
chiaroscuro  of  shapes  and  colours  and  movements, 
from  the  rustling  earth  to  the  starlit  sky*?  So  the 
poet's  imagery  is  steeped  in  primary  emotional 
hues, — moods  of  pity  or  cruelty,  passionate  yearn- 
ing, sorrow,  fear,  tenderness,  aching  desire,  re- 
morse, anguish.  This  imagery  springs  direct  from 
his  sensations  and  is  born  of  his  momentary  emo- 
tional vision,  not  of  his  cultivated,  imaginative 
reflections,  unlike  that  of  the  majority  of  our  tal- 

[>5i] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

ented  dilettanti  poets.  It  carries  with  it  to  a  re- 
markable degree  the  feeling,  the  atmospheric 
impression  of  nature  in  the  passing  moment. 
But  we  must  quote  an  example: 

A   BABY  ASLEEP   AFTER   PAIN. 

As  a  drenched,  drowned  bee 
Hangs  numb  and  heavy  from  a  bending  flower, 

So  clings  to  me 
My  baby,  her  brown  hair  brushed  with  wet  tears 

And  laid  against  her  cheek; 
Her  soft  white  legs  hanging  heavily  over  my  arm, 
Swinging  heavily  to  my  movement  as  I  walk. 

My  sleeping  baby  hangs  upon  my  life, 
Like  a  burden  she  hangs  on  me. 

She  has  always  seemed  so  light, 
But  now  she  is  wet  with  tears  and  numb  with  pain 
Even  her  floating  hair  sinks  heavily. 

Reaching  downwards ; 
As  the  wings  of  a  drenched,  drowned  bee 

Are  a  heaviness,  and  a  weariness. 

This,  so  simple,  so  spontaneous,  and  apparently 
effortless,  holds  all  the  felicity  of  the  moment 
in  the  emotional  mood.  And  while  psycholog- 
ically true,  the  poet's  rendering  of  a  sensuous 
impression  is  most  spiritual  in  its  appeal.  But 
here  I  must  pause,  and  turn  to  some  considera- 
tion of  Mr,  Lawrence's  work  in  creative  fiction. 

[152] 


MR.    D.    H.    LAWRENCE 

II 

It  was  evident  to  a  critical  eye  that  with  "The 
White  Peacock"  (1911)  a  new  artistic  force  was 
stirring  in  fiction.  Curiously,  those  qualities  of 
"realism"  and  "naturalism"  both,  that  had  been 
solemnly  exorcised  with  book,  candle,  and  bell 
in  many  professorial  admonitions,  reappeared  here 
in  company  with  intense  poetic  susceptibility  and 
with  an  evident  delight  in  the  exuberance  of  na- 
ture. There  was  nothing  here  of  M.  Zola's  "false 
naturalism"  or  of  his  "scientific  reporting" ;  on 
the  contrary,  the  artist's  fault  lay  in  the  unchas- 
tened  vivacity  of  his  thronging  impressions  and 
rioting  emotions.  The  story,  one  of  country  life, 
traces  at  length  the  subtle  degeneration  of  the 
young  farmer,  George,  who,  slow  and  inexperien- 
ced in  woman's  ways,  takes  the  wrong  girl  to  wife. 
The  book  in  its  frank  and  unabashed  imaginative 
fecundity  and  luxuriant  colouring,  is  a  baffling 
one :  an  extraordinary  intimacy  with  the  feminine 
love  instincts  is  blended  with  untrammelled  psy- 
chological interest  in  the  gamut  of  the  passions. 
But  a  certain  over-bold,  lush  immaturity,  a  certain 
sprawling  laxity  of  taste,  confused  the  outlines. 
The  youthful  artist  evidently  did  not  know 
where  to  be  silent,  or  how  to  select  and  concen- 

1I153] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

trate  his  scenes.  These  faults  were  less  in  evi- 
dence in  "The  Trespasser"  (1912),  the  tale  of  a 
sensitive,  frail,  and  ardent  man's  fleeting  amour 
with  a  girl,  superficial  and  cold  in  nature,  who  is 
dallying  with  passion.  The  same  intense  suscep- 
tibility to  physical  impressions,  the  same  vibrating 
joy  in  sensuous  feelings  were  repeated  here  in  a 
solo  on  erotic  strings.  The  atmosphere  is  heavy 
with  the  odour  of  meadow-sweet,  which  is  sud- 
denly dissipated  by  the  shock  of  tragedy.  Sigis- 
mund's  suicide,  and  the  settling  down  again  of 
his  forgetful  suburban  family  into  the  tame  stream 
of  its  bourgeois  commonplaceness,  are  painted  with 
inflexible  sincerity  and  great  psychological  acu- 
men. An  occasional  commonness  both  of  lan- 
guage and  tone  is,  however,  at  variance  with  the 
artist's  intensity  of  perception.  But  Mr.  Law- 
rence silenced  his  critics  by  his  third  novel,  "Sons 
and  Lovers,"  an  epic  of  family  life  in  a  colliery 
district,  a  piece  of  social  history  on  a  large  canvas, 
painted  with  a  patient  thoroughness  and  bold  ve- 
racity which  both  Balzac  and  Flaubert  might 
have  envied.  The  central  theme,  an  unhappy 
working-class  marriage,  a  woman's  struggle  to  rear 
her*  children  while  sustained  by  her  strong  puri- 
tanical spirit,  develops  later  irito  a  study  of  her 
maternal    aversion    to    surrendering   her   son    to 

[•54] 


MR.    D.    H.    LAWRENCE 

another  woman's  arms.  The  theme  is  dissected  in 
its  innermost  spiritual  fibres  with  an  unflinching 
and  loving  exactitude,  while  the  family  drama  is 
seen  against  an  impressive  background  of  the 
harsh,  driving  realities  of  life  in  a  colliery  dis- 
trict. This  novel  is  really  the  only  one  of  any 
breadth  of  vision  in  contemporary  English  fiction 
that  lifts  working-class  life  out  of  middle-class 
hands,  and  restores  it^  to  its  native  atmosphere  of 
hard  veracity.  The  mining  people,  their  mental 
outlook,  ways  of  life,  and  habits,  and  the  woof 
of  their  domestic  joys  and  cares,  are  contrasted 
with  some  country  farming  types  in  a  neighbour- 
ing village,  where  the  smoky  horizon  of  indus- 
trialism merges,  to  the  passionate  eyes  of  a  girl 
and  boy  in  love,  in  the  magic  of  quiet  woods  and 
pastures.  The  whole  treatment  is  unerringly  true 
and  spiritually  profound,  marred  a  little  by  a  feel- 
ing of  photographic  accuracy  in  the  narrative  and 
by  a  lack  of  restraint  in  some  of  the  later  love 
scenes.  The  main  theme,  a  life-conflict  between 
husband  and  wife,  is  handled  again  in  a  tragedy, 
"The  Widowing  of  Mrs.  Holroyd"  (1914),  a 
drama  finely  human  in  its  passionate  veracity. 
This  is  a  study,  intimately  observed,  of  powerful 
primitive  types,  first  shown  with  the  hot  breath 
of  anger  in  the  nostrils,  and  then  with  the  stark- 

U55] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

ness,  pallor,  and  rigidity  of  death.  Contrasted 
with  the  puerile  frivolity  and  catchy  sensational- 
ism of  the  London  stage,  this  drama  stands  like 
one  of  Meunier's  impressive  figures  of  Labour 
amid  the  marble  inanities  of  a  music  hall  foyxr. 
In  his  volume  of  short  stories,  "The  Prussian  Offi- 
cer" (1914),  the  intensity  of  the  poet-psycholo- 
gist's imagination  triumphs  over  the  most  refrac- 
tory material.  Again  it  is  the  triumph  of  passion 
thrilling  both  jiiesh  and  spirit,  making  the  material 
of  life  subservient  to  itself,  forcing  its  way  from 
smoky  darkness  to  light  through  the  eager  cells  of 
nature.  Whether  it  be  the  sustained  lust  of 
cruelty  in  the  rigid  Prussian  officer,  or  the  flame  of 
sick  misery  leaping  to  revenge  in  the  heart  of  the 
young  Bavarian  orderly;  or  the  cruel  suspense  and 
agony  of  pain  in  the  mutual  confession  of  love  of 
the  young  miner  and  the  vicar's  daughter;  or  the 
bitterness  of  ironic  regret  of  the  lovers  who  have 
fallen  asunder  in  "The  Shades  of  Spring" ;  or  hate 
and  suffering  in  a  wife's  reckless  confession  of  her 
past  in  "Shadow  in  the  Rose  Garden";  in  each  of 
the  dozen  tales  it  is  the  same  poetic  realization  of 
passion's  smouldering  force,  of  its  fusion  of 
aching  pleasure  and  pain  in  the  roots  of  sexual 
life,  and  the  same  twinness  of  senses  and  soul  in 

[156] 


MR.    D.    H.    LAWRENCE 

the  gathering  and  the  breaking  waves  of  surging 
emotion. 

And  here  is  the  secret  of  the  individual  quality 
and  the  definite  limitations  of  Mr.  Lawrence's 
vision.  Like  a  tree  on  a  hot  summer  noon,  his  art 
casts  a  sharp,  fore-shortened  shadow.  His  char- 
acters do  not  pass  far  outside  that  enchanted  circle 
of  passion  in  and  round  which  they  move.  That 
this  circle  is  narrow  compared  with  the  literary 
field,  say,  of  a  Maupassant,  is  I  think  due  to  Mr. 
Lawrence's  poetical  intensity  restricting  his  psy- 
chological insight.  And  his  emotional  intensity, 
again,  is  indissolubly  one  with  his  sensuous  im- 
pressionability. And  here  we  may  pick  up  again 
the  dropped  thread  of  our  opening  remarks  about 
the  suspicion  with  which  the  moralists  always 
view  art.  The  attack  on  the  literature  of  pas- 
sions (and  indirectly  on  sensuous  beauty  itself 
which  feeds  the  passions)  is  generally  conducted 
on  the  line  of  argument  that  such  literature  is  in 
opposition  to  the  "higher  and  more  spiritual"  in- 
stincts of  mankind.  The  answer  is  that  each 
specimen  of  such  literature  can  only  be  judged 
according  to  the  relation  and  the  equilibrium,  es- 
tablished by  the  artist,  between  the  morality  of 
nature  and  the  morality  of  man.     In  the  love  life 

[157] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

the  struggle  is  endless  between  the  fundamental 
instinct  of  sexual  attraction  and  the  narrowing 
instincts  of  worldly  prudence  and  of  family  and 
social  duty.  In  seeking  to  cripple  or  suppress 
the  literature  of  the  passions,  the  moralists  are  tip- 
ping up  the  "idealistic"  scale  unduly  to  the  detri- 
ment of  the  fundamental  human  instincts;  and 
this  reacts  injuriously,  just  as  does  the  ascetic  vili- 
fication of  the  "body,"  on  the  spiritual  life.  The 
greater  the  triumph  of  materialism  and  industrial 
squalour  in  our  commercialized  society,  the  more 
contempt  is  poured  on  the  "world  of  sensuous  de- 
light" and  the  less  regard  paid  to  Art,  Poetry,  and 
aesthetic  Beauty.  So  Keats  is  indicted,  as  we 
have  seen,  of  "selfishly  swooning  away  in  a  dream 
of  beauty"  !  And  whom  would  the  moralists  who 
cut  off  the  truthful  delineation  of  the  passions  on 
the  ground  that  such  leads  to  sensuous  indulgence, 
— ^whom  would  the  moralists  put  in  Keats's  place*? 
This  is  what  we  ask  also  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Law- 
rence's work,  which,  as  I  have  said,  restores  to  "pas- 
sion" shades  of  its  original  meaning  of  suffering. 
His  lovers  are  not  those  bright  young  people  of 
the  popular  novel  whose  idea  of  love  seems  to  be 
inseparably  connected  with  success  and  worldly 
prosperity  and  having  a  nice  house  and  being  en- 
vied by  their  neighbours.     His  lovers  are  shaken, 

[158] 


MR.    D.    H.    LAWRENCE 

they  suffer;  to  them  is  revealed  the  significance  of 
things :  they  have  to  pass  through  much  and  endure 
much  in  attaining  or  missing  their  passionate  de- 
sire. Theirs  are  spiritual  experiences,  not  merely 
"sensuous  gratification,"  as  the  moralists  so  glibly 
phrase  it.  And  therefore  Mr.  Lawrence's  repre- 
sentation of  the  sensuous  and  animal  strands  and 
instincts  in  our  nature  needs,  I  say,  no  moraliza- 
tion.  These  elements  exist, — they  are,  in  a  sense, 
the  foundation  on  which  our  moral  being  has  been 
slowly  reared;  and  the  artist  who  can  draw  (and 
few  there  are  who  can)  a  truthful  representation 
of  our  passionate  impulses,  kept  under  or  leaping 
into  action,  takes  an  indispensable  place  in  litera- 
ture. In  the  literature  that  explores,  the  rela- 
tions between  the  morality  of  nature,  as  expressed 
in  the  activity  of  sexual  feeling,  and  worldly 
conduct,  Mr.  Lawrence's  fiction  takes  a  high 
place.  His  story,  "Daughters  of  the  Vicar," 
is  an  admirable  analysis  of  the  frequent  clash 
between  the  two;  and  the  sketches  called  "Second 
Best"  and  "Shadow  in  the  Rose  Garden"  reestab- 
lish the  necessary  equilibrium  so  flagrantly  dis- 
turbed by  the  moralists  in  their  exaltation  of  the 
"idealistic"  scale.  Such  studies,  to  w'hich  one  may 
add  "The  Christening"  and  The  White  Stocking," 
at  best  made  an  appeal  to  our  fundamental  consci- 

[>59] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

ousness  that  "the  good"  as  conceived  by  the  moral- 
ists confines  to  too  narrow  a  circle  our  tides  of  emo- 
tional energies;  and  this  vindication  of  "passion" 
in  these  stories  appears  to  take  its  rise  in  the  in- 
stinct for  racial  health.  But  I  have  said  enough 
on  this  head,  and  will  only  add  that  those  critics 
who  challenge  the  right  to  existence  of  such 
works  of  art  might  penetrate  to  a  more  vulner- 
able side  if  they  left  the  road  of  "morals"  and 
took  the  path  of  "taste." 

1916 


[160] 


RICHARD    JEFFERIES 


RICHARD  JEFFERIES'  "AMARYLLIS 
AT  THE  FAIR"  ' 

'  'f  I  ^HE  book  is  not  a  novel"  is  a  phrase  often 
I  in  the  mouth  of  critics,  who  on  second 
thoughts  might,  perhaps,  add  with  less 
emphasis,  "it  does  not  conform  to  the  common 
type  of  novel."  Fortified,  however,  with  that 
sense  of  rectitude  that  dictates  conformity  to  our 
neighbours  and  a  safe  acquiescence  in  the  myster- 
ious movements  of  public  taste,  Victorian  critics 
have  exclaimed  with  touching  unanimity — "What 
a  pity  Jefferies  tried  to  write  novels!  Why 
didn't  he  stick  to  essays  in  natural  history!" 

What  a  pity  Jefferies  should  have  given  us 
"Amaryllis  at  the  Fair,"  and  "After  London  " ! 
This  opinion  has  been  propagated  with  such  fer- 
vency that  it  seems  almost  a  pity  to  disturb  it  by 
inquiring  into  the  nature  of  these  his  achievements. 
Certainly  the  critics  and  their  critical  echoes  are 
united.  "He  wrote  some  later  novels  ot  indif- 
ferent merit,"  says  a  gentleman   in  "Chambers' 

1  "Amaryllis  at  the  Fair,"  by  R^ichard  Jefferies.     Introduction 
by  Edward   Garnett.     New   Edition,  London,   1904. 

[163] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

Encyclopedia."  "Has  any  one  ever  been  able  to 
write  with  free  and  genuine  appreciation  of  even 
the  later  novels'?"  echoes  the  voice  of  a  lady,  Miss 
Grace  Toplis,  writing  on  Jefferies.  "In  brief,  he 
was  an  essayist  and  not  a  novelist  at  all,"  says 
Mr.  Henry  Salt.  "It  is  therefore  certain  that 
his  importance  for  posterity  will  dwindle,  if  it 
has  not  already  dwindled,  to  that  given  by  a 
bundle  of  descriptive  selections.  But  these  will 
occupy  a  foremost  place  on  their  particular  shelf, 
the  shelf  at  the  head  of  which  stands  Gilbert, 
White  and  Gray,"  says  Mr.  George  Saintsbury. 
"He  was  a  reporter  of  genius,  and  he  never 
got  beyond  reporting.  Mr.  Besant  has  the 
vitalizing  imagination  which  Jefferies  lacked," 
says  Mr.  Henley  in  his  review  of  Walter 
Besant's  "Eulogy  of  Richard  Jefferies" ;  and 
again,  "They  are  not  novels  as  he  (Walter 
Besant)  admits,  they  are  a  series  of  pictures.  .  .  . 
That  is  the  way  he  takes  Jefferies  at  Jefferies' 
worst."  Yes,  it  is  very  touching  this  unan- 
imity, and  it  is  therefore  a  pleasure  for  this 
critic  to  say  that  in  his  judgment  "Amaryllis  at  the 
Fair"  is  one  of  the  very  few  later-day  novels  of 
English  country  life  that  are  worth  putting  on 
one's  shelf,  and  that  to  make  room  for  it  he 
would  turn  out  certain  highly-praised  novels  by 

[164] 


RICHARD   JEFFERIES 

Hardy  which  do  not  ring  quite  true,  novels  which 
the  critics  and  the  public,  again  with  touching 
unanimity,  have  voted  to  be  of  high  rank.  But 
what  is  a  novel'?  the  reader  may  ask.  A  novel, 
says  the  learned  Professor  Annandale,  is  "a  ficti- 
tious prose  narrative,  involving  some  plot  of 
greater  or  less  intricacy,  and  professing  to  give 
a  picture  of  real  life,  generally  exhibiting  the 
passions  and  sentiments,  in  a  state  of  great  activ- 
ity, and  especially  the  passion  of  love."  Well, 
"Amaryllis  at  the  Fair"  is  a  fictitious  prose  nar- 
rative professing  to  give  a  picture  of  real  life,  and 
involving  a  plot  of  little  intricacy.  Certainly  it 
exhibits  the  passions  and  sentiments  in  a  state  of 
great  activity.  But  Mr.  Henry  Salt,  whose  little 
book  on  Jefferies  is  the  best  yet  published,  further 
remarks:  "Jefferies  was  quite  unable  to  give  any 
vivid  dramatic  life  to  his  stories  ...  his  instinct 
was  that  of  the  naturalist  who  observes  and  moral- 
izes rather  than  that  of  the  novelist  who  penetrates 
and  interprets ;  and  consequently  his  rustic  charac- 
ters, though  strongly  and  clearly  drawn,  do  not 
live,  as,  for  example,  those  of  Thomas  Hardy 
live.  .  .  .  Men  and  animals  are  alike  mere  fig- 
ures in  his  landscapes." 

So  far  the  critics.     Jefferies  being  justly  held  to 
be  "no  ordinary  novelist,"  it  is  inferred  by  most 

[•65] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

that  something  is  wrong  with  "Amaryllis  at  the 
Fair,"  and  the  book  is  passed  over  in  silence.  But 
we  do  not  judge  every  novel  by  the  same  test. 
We  do  not  judge  "Tristram  Shandy,"  for  example, 
by  its  intricate  plot,  or  by  its  "vivid  drama,"  we 
judge  it  simply  as  an  artistic  revelation  of  human 
life  and  by  its  humorous  insight  into  human  charac- 
ter. And  judged  by  the  same  simple  test  "Amaryl- 
lis at  the  Fair,"  we  contend,  is  a  living  picture  of 
life,  a  creative  work  of  imagination  of  a  high  or- 
der. Iden,  the  unsuccessful  farmer  who  "built 
for  all  time,  and  not  for  the  circumstances  of  the 
hour,"  is  a  masterly  piece  of  character  drawing. 
But  Iden  is  a  personal  portrait,  the  reader  may 
object,  Well,  what  about  Uncle  Toby?  From 
what  void  did  he  spring "?  Iden,  to  our  mind,  is 
almost  as  masterly  a  conception,  as  broadly  human 
a  figure  as  Uncle  Toby.  And  Mrs.  Iden,  where 
will  you  find  this  type  of  nervous,  irritable  wife, 
full  of  spiteful  disillusioned  love  for  her  dilatory 
husband,  better  painted  than  by  Jeff  cries'?  But 
Mrs.  Iden  is  a  type,  not  an  individual,  the  reader 
may  say.  Excellent  reader!  and  what  about  the 
Widow  Wadman'?  She  is  no  less  and  no  more  of 
an  individual  than  is  Mrs.  Iden.  It  was  a  great 
feat  of  Sterne  to  create  so  cunningly  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  Shandy  household,  but  Jefferies  has 
['66] 


RICHARD    JEFFERIES 

accomplished  an  artistic  feat  also  in  drawing  the 
relations  of  the  Idens,  father,  mother,  and 
daughter.  jHow  true,  how  unerringly  true  to 
human  nature  is  this  picture  of  the  Iden  house- 
hold; how  delicately  felt  and  rendered  to  a  hair  is 
his  picture  of  the  father's  sluggish,  masculine 
will,  pricked  ineffectually  by  the  waspish  tongue 
of  feminine  criticism.  Further,  we  not  only  have 
the  family's  idiosyncrasies,  their  habits,  mental  at- 
mosphere, and  domestic  story  brought  before  us  in 
a  hundred  pages,  easily  and  instinctively  by  the 
hand  of  the  artist,  but  we  have  the  whole  book 
steeped  in  the  breath  of  English  spring,  the  restless 
ache  of  spring  that  thrills  through  the  nerves,  and 
stirs  the  sluggish  winter  blood;  we  have  the  spring 
feeling  breaking  from  the  March  heavens,  and 
the  March  earth  in  copse,  meadow,  and  plough- 
land  as  it  has  scarcely  been  rendered  before  by 
English  novelist.  The  description  of  Amaryllis 
running  out  into  the  March  wind  to  call  her 
father  from  his  potato  planting  to  see  the  daffodil ; 
the  picture  of  Iden  pretending  to  sleep  in  his 
chair  that  he  may  watch  the  mice;  the  description 
of  the  girl  Amaryllis  watching  the  crowd  of  plain, 
ugly  men  of  the  countryside  flocking  along  the 
road  to  the  fair;  the  description  of  Amadis  the 
invalid,  in  the  old  farm  kitchen  among  the  stal- 

[167] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

wart  country  folk — all  these  pictures  and  a  dozen 
others  in  the  book  are  painted  with  a  masterly- 
hand.  Pictures  I  the  critical  reader  may  com- 
plain. Yes,  pictures  of  living  men  and  women. 
What  does  it  matter  whether  a  revelation  of  hu- 
man life  is  conveyed  to  us  by  pictures  or  by  action 
so  long  as  it  is  conveyed^  Mr.  Saintsbury  classes 
Jeiferies  with  Gray,  presumably  because  both  wri- 
ters have  written  of  the  English  landscape.  With 
Gray  I  Jefferies  in  his  work  as  a  naturalist  and 
observer  of  wild  life  may  be  classed  merely  for 
convenience  with  Gilbert  White.  But  this  clas- 
sification only  applies  to  one  half  of  Jefferies' 
books.  By  his  "Wild  life  in  a  Southern  County" 
he  stands  beside  Gilbert  White;  by  his  "Story  of 
My  Heart"  he  stands  by  himself,  a  little  apart 
from  the  poets,  and  by  "Amaryllis  at  the  Fair" 
he  stands  among  the  half-dozen  country  writers  of 
the  century  whose  work  is  racy  of  the  English  soil 
and  of  rural  English  human  nature.  I  will  name 
three  of  these  writers,  Barnes,  Cobbett,  Waugh, 
and  my  attentive  readers  can  name  the  other  three. 
To  come  back  to  "Amaryllis  at  the  Fair,"  why  is 
it  so  masterly,  or,  further,  wherein  is  it  so  masterly, 
the  curious  reader  may  inquire "?  "Is  it  not  full  of 
digressions'?  Granted  that  the  first  half  of  the 
"novel"  is  beautiful  in  style,  does  not  Jefferies 

[•68] 


RICHARD   JEFFERIES 

suddenly  break  his  method,   introduce   his  own 
personality,    intersperse    abrupt    disquisitions    on 
food,  illness,  and  Fleet  Street  *?     Is  not  that  des- 
cription of  Iden's  dinner  a  little — well,  a  little  un- 
usual ?     In  short,  is  not  the  book  a  disquisition  on 
life  from  the  standpoint  of  Jefferies'  personal  ex- 
periences?    And  if  this  is  so,  how  can  the  book  be 
so   fine   an   achievement'?"     Oh,   candid   reader, 
with  the  voice  of  authority  sounding  in  your  ears 
(and  have  we  not  Messrs.   Henley,  Saintsbury 
and  Toplis  bound  in  critical  amity  against  us*?)  a 
book  may  break  the  formal  rules,  and  yet  it  may 
yield  to  us  just  that  salt  of  life  which  we  may 
seek  for  vainly  in  the  works  of  more  faultless 
writers.     The    strength    of    "Amaryllis    at    the 
Fair"  is  that  its  beauty  springs  naturally  from 
the  prosaic  earthly  facts  of  life  it  narrates,  and 
that,  in  the  natural  atmosphere  breathed  by  its 
people,  the  prose  and  the  poetry  of  their  life  are 
one.     In  the  respect  of  the  artistic  naturalness  of 
its  homely  picture,  the  book  is  very  superior  to, 
say    "The   Mayor   of   Casterbridge,"    where    we 
are  conscious  that  the  author  has  been  at  work 
arranging  and  rearranging  his  charming  studies 
and    impressions    of    the    old-world    people    of 
Casterbridge    into    the    pattern    of    an    exciting 
plot.     Now  it  is  precisely  in  the  artificed  dra- 

[169] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

matic  story  of  "The  Mayor  of  Casterbridge"^ 
and  we  cite  this  novel  as  characteristic  both  in  its 
strength  and  weakness  of  its  distinguished  author 
— that  we  are  brought  to  feel  that  we  have  not 
been  shown  the  characters  of  Casterbridge  going 
their  way  in  life  naturally,  but  that  they  have  been 
moved  about,  kaleidoscopically,  to  suit  the  exi- 
gencies of  the  plot,  and  that  the  more  this  is  done 
the  less  significance  for  us  have  their  thoughts 
and  actions.  Watching  the  quick  whirling 
changes  of  Farfrae  and  Lucetta,  Henchard, 
and  Newson  in  the  matrimonial  mazes  of  the 
story,  we  perceive  indeed  whence  comes  that 
atmosphere  of  stage  crisis  and  stage  effect  which 
suddenly  introduces  a  dissillusioning  sense  of  un- 
reality, and  mars  the  artistic  unity  of  this  charm- 
ing picture,  so  truthful  in  other  respects  to  Wes- 
sex  rural  life.  Plot  is  Mr.  Hardy's  weakness, 
and  perfect  indeed  and  convincing  would  have 
been  his  pictures  if  he  could  have  thrown  his 
plots  to  the  four  winds.  May  we  not  be  thank- 
ful, therefore,  that  Jeiferies  was  no  hand  at  elab- 
orating a  plot,  and  that  in  "Amaryllis  at  the 
Fair,"  the  scenes,  the  descriptions,  the  conversa- 
tions are  spontaneous  as  life,  and  Jefferies'  com- 
mentary on  them  is  like  Fielding's  commentary, 
a  medium  by  which  he  lives  with  his  characters. 
[170] 


RICHARD    JEFFERIES 

The  author's  imagination,  memory,  and  instinc- 
tive perception  are  all  working  together.  And 
thus  his  picture  of  country  life  in  "Amaryllis" 
brings  with  it  as  convincing  and  as  fresh  a  breath 
of  life  as  we  find  in  Cobbett's,  Waugh's  and 
Barnes'  country  writings.  When  a  writer  ar- 
rives at  being  perfectly  natural  in  his  atmos- 
phere, his  style  and  his  subject  seem  to  become 
one.  He  moves  easily  and  surely.  Out  of 
the  splintered  mass  of  ideas  and  emotions,  out 
of  the  sensations,  the  observations  and  revelations 
of  his  youth,  and  the  atmosphere  familiar  to  him 
through  long  feeling,  he  builds  up  a  subtle  and 
cunning  picture  for  us,  a  complete  illusion  of  life 
more  true  than  the  reality.  For  what  prosaic 
people  call  the  reality  is  merely  the  co-ordination 
in  their  own  minds  of  perhaps  a  hundredth  part 
of  the  aspects  of  life  around  them ;  and  only  this 
hundredth  part  they  have  noticed.  But  the  crea- 
tive mind  builds  up  a  living  picture  out  of  the 
hundreds  of  aspects  most  of  us  are  congenitally 
blind  to.  This  is  what  Jefferies  has  done  in 
"Amaryllis  at  the  Fair."  The  book  is  rich  in  the 
contradictory  forces  of  life,  in  its  quick  twists  and 
turns:  we  teel  in  it  there  is  nature  working  alike 
in  the  leaves  of  grass  outside  the  Idens'  house, 
in  the  blustering  winds  round  the  walls,  and  in 

[171] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

the  minds  of  the  characters  indoors;  and  the  style 
is  as  fresh  as  the  April  wind.  Everything  is  grow- 
ing, changing,  breathing  in  the  book.  But  the 
accomplished  critics  do  not  notice  these  trivial 
strengths  I  It  is  enough  for  them  that  Jefferies 
was  not  a  novelist  I  Indeed,  Mr.  Saintsbury 
apparently  thinks  that  Jefferies  made  a  mistake 
in  drawing  his  philosophy  from  an  open-air  study 
of  nature,  for  he  writes:  "Unfortunately  for 
Jefferies  his  philosophic  background  was  not  like 
Wordsworth's  clear  and  cheerful,  but  wholly 
vague  and  partly  gloomy."  It  was  neither  vague 
nor  gloomy,  we  may  remark,  parenthetically,  but 
we  may  admit  that  Jefferies  saw  too  directly  Na- 
ture's life  to  interpret  all  Nature's  doings,  a  la 
Wordsworth,  and  lend  them  a  philosophic,  sol- 
emn significance. 

The  one  charge  that  may  with  truth  be  brought 
against  "Amaryllis  at  the  Fair"  is  that  its  digres- 
sions damage  the  artistic  illusion  of  the  whole. 
The  book  shows  the  carelessness,  the  haste,  the 
roughness  of  a  sketch,  a  sketch,  moreover,  which 
Jefferies  was  not  destined  to  carry  to  the  end  he 
had  planned;  but  we  repeat,  let  us  be  thankful 
that  its  artistic  weaknesses  are  those  of  a  sketch 
direct  from  nature,  rather  than  those  of  an  ambi- 
tious studio  picture.     But  these  digressions   are 

[172] 


RICHARD    JEFFERIES 

an  integral  part  of  the  book's  character,  just  as  the 
face  of  a  man  has  its  own  blemishes :  they  are  one 
with  the  spirit  of  the  whole,  and  so,  if  they  break 
somewhat  the  illusion  of  the  scenes,  they  do  not 
damage  its  spiritual  unity.  It  is  this  spiritual 
unity  on  which  we  must  insist,  because  "Amaryllis" 
is  indeed  Jefferies'  last  and  complete  testament  on 
human  life.  He  wrote  it,  or  rather  dictated  it  to 
his  wife,  as  he  lay  in  pain,  slowly  dying,  and  he 
has  put  into  it  the  frankness  of  a  dying  man. 
How  real,  how  solid,  how  deliciously  sweet  seemed 
those  simple  earthly  joys,  those  human  appetites 
of  healthy,  vigorous  men  to  him!  How  intense 
is  his  passion  and  spiritual  hunger  for  the  beauty 
of  earth !  Like  a  flame  shooting  up  from  the  log  it 
is  consuming,  so  this  passion  for  the  green  earth, 
for  the  earth  in  wind  and  rain  and  sunshine, 
consumes  the  wasted,  consumptive  body  of  the 
dying  man.  The  reality,  the  solidity  of  the 
homely  farm-house  life  he  describes  spring  from 
the  intensity  with  which  he  clings  to  all  he  loves, 
to  the  cold  March  wind  buffeting  the  face,  the 
mating  cries  of  the  birds  in  the  hot  sunshine. 
Life  is  so  terribly  strong,  so  deliciously  real,  so 
full  of  man's  unsatisfied  hungry  ache  for  hap{)i- 
ness;  and  sweet  is  the  craving,  bitter  the  knowl- 
edge   of    the    unfulfilment.     So,    inspiring    and 

[173] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

vivifying  the  whole,  in  every  line  of  "Amaryllis" 
is  Jefferies'  philosophy  of  life.  Jefferies  "did 
not  understand  human  nature,"  say  the  learned, 
the  erudite  critics.  Did  he  not?  "Amaryllis 
at  the  Fair"  is  one  of  the  truest  criticisms  of 
human  life,  oh  reader,  you  are  likely  to  meet 
with.  The  mixedness  of  things,  the  old,  old 
human  muddle,  the  meanness  and  stupidity 
and  shortsightedness  of  humanity,  the  good  salty 
taste  of  life  in  the  healthy  mouth,  the  spirituality 
of  love,  the  strong  earthy  roots  of  appetite,  man's 
lust  of  life,  with  circumstances  awry,  and  the  sharp 
wind  blowing  alike  on  the  just  and  the  unjust — 
all  is  there  on  the  printed  page  of  "Amaryllis  at 
the  Fair."  The  song  of  the  wind  and  the  roar  of 
London  unite  and  mingle  therein  for  those  who 
do  not  bring  the  exacting  eye  of  superiority  to  this 
most  human  book. 

1904 


[174] 


HENRY   LAWSON 


HENRY  LAWSON  AND  THE 
DEMOCRACY ' 


W 


HAT  Henry  Lawson's  talent  is  it  would 
be  impossible  to  discover  from  his  po- 
etry. His  verse,  to  put  it  bluntly,  is  the 
verse  of  a  thousand-and-one  vigorous  versifiers 
of  today,  writing  humorously  or  picturesquely 
it  may  be,  but  producing  work  thereby  which  shows 
the  stamp  of  the  literary  artisan  rather  than  that 
of  the  artist.  To  consider  Lawson's  verse  is,  how- 
ever, interesting,  because  through  its  medium  his 
characteristic  humour,  sentiment  and  outlook  on 
life  struggle  vainly  to  express  anything  that  others 
have  not  put  as  well.  Lawson's  verse  is  that  of  a 
third-rate  writer;  his  prose  is  that  of  a  writer  who 
represents  a  continent.  Like  a  voice  speaking  to 
you  through  a  bad  telephone,  the  poems  convey  the 
speaker's  meaning,  but  all  the  shades  of  original 
tone  are  muffled,  lost  or  hidden.  There  is  plenty 
of  evidence  of  rattling  humour  and  sentimen.talism 
in  the  poems,  and  these  indeed  show  the  skeleton 
of  his  talent,  but  all  its  delicate  nerves  and  tissues 

1  "While  the  Billy  Boils."     By  Henry  Lawson,  Sydney,   1896. 

[177] 


FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

and  the   ligaments  that  make  the  writer  truly- 
original,  one  must  look  for  in  his  prose. 

I  have  said  that  Henry  Lawson's  sketches  bring 
before  us  the  life  of  a  continent,  and  if  my  readers 
like  to  qualify  this  high  praise  by  putting  it  thus: 
"In  the  absence  of  great  writers  he  is  the  writer 
who  best  represents  the  Australia  of  today,"  I 
shall  not  object.  No  writer,  of  course,  stands  for 
the  whole  of  his  nation,  but  only  for  a  part; 
and  if  Australia  had  now  a  flowering  time  of  na- 
tional genius,  with  a  representative  group  of  crea- 
tive talents  appearing,  Lawson,  undeniably,  might 
find  his  place  marked  proxime  accessit.  A  writer's 
place  in  the  national  life  cannot,  however,  be 
assessed  by  any  official  handicap,  or  by  including 
him  in  an  Olympian  contest  of  merit  between  the 
modern  writers  of  all  nations.  Lawson's  special 
value  to  us  is  that  he  stands  as  the  representative 
writer  of  a  definite  environment,  as  the  portrayer 
of  life  on  the  Australian  soil,  and  that  he  brings 
before  our  eyes  more  fully  and  vividly  than  any 
other  man  the  way  the  Australian  settlers'  life 
has  been  going,  its  characteristic  spirit,  code  and 
outlook,  the  living  thought  and  sensation  of  these 
tens  and  hundreds  and  thousands  and  millions  of 
people  who  make  up  the  Australian  democracy. 
And  here,  to  place  Lawson  rightly,  I  must  make 

[•78] 


HENRY   LAWSON 

a  distinction  between  "representative"  writers. 
Thousands  of  modern  writers  are  typical  of  their 
surroundings,  and  are,  indeed,  products  of  the 
environments  they  envisage  for  us.  There  are, 
perhaps,  over  a  hundred  clever  French  writers 
today  who  consciously  and  acutely  analyse  the 
spirit  of  their  generation;  but  a  writer  must  not 
only  reflect  life,  he  must  focus  and  typify,  and  the 
more  he  can  focus  of  life  the  more  significant  he 
becomes.  Thus,  there  are  many  clever  novelists, 
but  only  one  Anatole  France.  Lawson,  as  an 
artist,  is  often  crude  and  disappointing,  often 
sketchy  and  rough,  but  many  of  his  slightest 
sketches  show  he  has  the  faculty  of  bringing  life  to 
a  focus,  of  making  it  typical.  Further,  the  point 
is.  What  is  the  artist's  commentary  on  the  life  he 
represents  worth?  What  depth  of  human  nature 
does  his  insight  touch?  To  answer  these  elemen- 
tary questions  is  to  explain  why  we  place  two 
such  representative  writers  as  Balzac  and  Eugene 
Sue,  the  one  fairly  high  in  the  scale,  the  other 
decidedly  low,  and  why  we  place  Fielding  higher 
than  Smollett.  And  to  answer  it  is  also  to  explain 
why  Australia  can  really  show  us  a  national  writer 
in  Henry  Lawson,  while  Canada  is  sending  us  an 
ingenious,  theatrical  story-teller  in  Mr.  Gilbert 
Parker.  Lawson's  journalistic  sketches  establish 
[179] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

fresh  creative  values  of  life,  but  the  merely  ingen- 
ious story-tellers  only  re-affirm  stale  valuations. 
It  is  in  the  sense,  then,  of  being  a  national  writer 
that  Henry  Lawson's  work  deserves  careful  atten- 
tion from  the  English  people.  We  hear  a  great 
deal  today  of  "The  Empire,"  and  of  "Hands 
Across  the  Sea,"  but  in  truth  English  people  seem 
to  care  much  more  about  expressing  fraternal  emo- 
tions than  in  ascertaining  what  is  in  their  kinsmen's 
heads. 

To  turn  to  Lawson's  art.  If  we  are  to  measure 
his  tales  chiefly  by  their  sketchiness,  by  their  in- 
equalities, by  their  casual  air  of  being  an  ingen- 
ious reporting  of  entertaining  incidents,  if  we  are 
to  lay  stress  on  the  caricaturist  and  the  sentimen- 
tal writer  in  him,  we  must  in  that  case  join  hands 
with  the  academic  critics  who  may  affirm  that 
Lawson's  work  really  falls  within  the  province  of 
those  ephemeral  story-tellers  who  serve  only  to 
amuse  their  generation.  The  answering  argu- 
ment is  that  Lawson  through  these  journalistic 
tales  interprets  the  life  of  the  Australian  people, 
typifies  the  average  life  for  us,  and  takes  us 
beneath  the  surface.  His  tales  are  not  merely 
all  foreground.  His  pictures  of  life  convey 
to  us  a  great  sense  of  the  background  of  the 
whole  people's   life;   their  struggles   and   cares, 

[180] 


HENRY    LAWSON 

their  humour  and  outlook,  live  in  his  pages. 
Nothing  is  more  difficult  to  find  in  this  gen- 
eration than  an  English  writer  who  identifies 
himself  successfully  with  the  life  of  the  working 
democracy,  a  writer  who  does  not  stand  aloof 
from  and  patronize  the  bulk  of  the  people  who 
labour  with  their  hands.  This  no  doubt  is  be- 
cause nearly  all  our  writers  have  a  middle-class 
bias  and  training,  and  so  either  write  down  to  or 
write  up  to  their  subject  when  it  leads  them  out- 
side their  own  class,  and  accordingly  their  valua- 
tions thereof  are  in  general  falsified.  Mrs.  Hum- 
phrey Ward  describes  her  own  class  admirably,  for 
example,  but  her  working  people  are  ludicrous. 
Gissing's  lower-middle-class  people  are  generally 
good,  but  his  working  men  are  feebly  drawn. 
Even  Hardy's  West-country  rustics  are  idealized 
at  times  to  suit  the  middle-class  taste.  We  have 
no  English  writer  so  true  as  Miss  Wilkins  is  to 
the  life  of  "the  people,"  and  she  does  not  profess 
to  write  as  one  of  them.  Lawson,  however,  has 
the  great  strength  of  the  writer  writing  simply  as 
one  of  the  democracy,  and  of  the  man  who  does 
not  have  to  climb  down  from  a  class  fence  in  or- 
der to  understand  the  human  nature  of  the  ma- 
jority of  his  fellow  men.  I  have  never  read 
anything  in  modern  English  literature  that  is 
[,8i] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

so  absolutely  democratic  in  tone,  so  much  the 
real  thing,  as  "Joe  Wilson's  Courtship."  And 
so  with  all  Lawson's  tales  and  sketches.  Not 
even  Maupassant  himself  has  taken  us  so  ab- 
solutely inside  people's  lives  as  do  the  tales  "Joe 
Wilson's  Courtship"  and  "A  Double  Buggy  at 
Lahey's  Creek."  And  it  is  this  rare,  convinc- 
ing tone  of  this  Australian  writer  that  gives 
him  a  great  value  now,  when  forty-nine  out 
of  fifty  Anglo-Saxon  writers  are  insisting  on  not 
describing  the  class  they  were  born  in,  but  strain- 
ing their  necks  and  their  outlooks  in  order  to  de- 
scribe the  life  of  the  class  which  God  has  placed 
beyond  them.  Hence  the  comparative  decay  and 
neglect  of  true  realism,  the  realism  of  "Tom 
Jones,"  and  of  "Emma,"  of  "Barchester  Towers," 
and  of  "Middlemarch."  Our  commercialized 
public,  intent  on  "rising,"  instinctively  prefers  to 
nourish  itself  on  Mr.  Anthony  Hope  rather  than 
on  Mrs.  Mary  E.  Mann.  It  is  therefore  an  im- 
mense relief  to  the  unsophisticated  critic,  after 
looking  East  and  West  and  North  and  South  for 
writers  untainted  by  the  ambition  to  be  mentally 
genteel,  to  come  across  the  small  group  of  able 
democratic  writers  on  the  "Sydney  Bulletin,"  of 
whom  Mr.  Lawson  is  the  chief.  In  "The  Country 
I  Come  From,"  in  "While  the  Billy  Boils,"  in 
[182] 


HENRY    LAWSON 

"Joe  Wilson  and  His  Mates,"  in  "On  the  Track," 
and  "Over  the  Slip  Rails,"  we  have  the  real  Aus- 
tralia, the  real  bushman,  "selector,"  "squat- 
ter," "roustabout,"  "shearer,"  drover,  shepherd, 
"spieler,"  shanty-keeper  and  publican,  the  real 
Australian  vi^oman,  mother,  wife  and  girl,  the  real 
"larrykin,"  the  real  boy,  the  real  "Boss,"  and  the 
real  "mate."  Read  "The  Union  Buries  its 
Dead,"  in  "The  Country  I  Come  From,"  if  you 
care  to  see  how  the  most  casual,  "newspapery" 
and  apparently  artless  art  of  this  Australian 
writer  carries  with  it  a  truer,  finer,  more  delicate 
commentary  on  life  than  do  the  idealistic  works 
in  any  of  our  genteel  school  of  writers.  It  isn't 
great  art,  but  it  is  near  to  great  art;  and,  more- 
over, great  art  is  not  to  be  found  every  "publishing 
season."  Read  "An  Oversight  of  Steelman's," 
if  you  want  humour,  the  real  thing,  and  read  "No 
Place  for  a  Woman"  if  you  want  pathos,  also  the 
real  thing.  If  you  want  a  working  philosophy 
of  life,  read  "How  Steelman  told  his  Story," 
and  if  you  want  to  see  how  admirably  a 
man  can  sum  up  his  own  country  in  ten 
careless  pages,  read  "His  Country  After  All," 
and  "The  Little  World  Left  Behind."  There 
is  a  little  sketch  in  "While  the  Billy  Boils" 
called  "A  Drover's  Wife,  "  a  sketch  of  a  woman  in 

[183] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

the  bush,  left  for  months  alone  with  her  four 
children  while  her  husband  is  up-country  droving. 
If  this  artless  sketch  be  taken  as  the  summary  of 
a  woman's  life,  giving  its  significance  in  ten  short 
pages,  even  Tolstoy  has  never  done  better.  Law- 
son  has  re-treated  this  subject  at  length  in  the  more 
detailed  picture  in  "Water  them  Geraniums";  I 
leave  it  to  mothers  of  all  ranks  and  stations  in  life 
to  say  how  it  affects  them,  and  whether  it  has  not 
universal  application  to  the  life  of  working 
women  wherever  the  sun  goes  down.  Art  stands 
for  much,  but  sincerity  also  stands  for  much  in  art, 
and  the  sincerity  of  Lawson's  tales  nearly  always 
drives  them  home.  There  is  another  little  sketch 
called  "They  Wait  on  the  Wharf  in  Black," 
which  artists  may  call  sentimental.  Well,  it  is 
sentimental;  it  is  on  a  sentimental  subject,  and  I 
have  never  found  anywhere  a  tale  that  so  well 
describes  the  meeting  of  a  father  with  his  children : 
it  is  all  there  in  the  last  two  pages,  the  family 
meeting,  and  the  family  feeling,  and  I  invite  the 
sceptical  reader  to  turn  to  it.  I  leave  it  to  more 
competent  critics  to  say  how  far  mere  sketches  of 
human  nature,  such  as  "The  Shanty-Keeper's 
Wife,"  can  vie  with  the  art  of  literary  pictures 
carefully  arranged  in  studio  lights,  with  real 
models  posed  "from  the  life,"  a  la  Mr.  Marion 

[1841 


HENRY   LAWSON 

Crawford.  I  have  not  laid  much  stress  on  Mr. 
Lawson's  humour,  as  the  public  is  likely  to 
lay  such  stress  on  it  as  to  fail  to  see  that 
his  vision  of  life  cannot  be  summed  up  by  the 
term  "humourist."  But,  undoubtedly,  Mr.  Law- 
son  is  pre-eminent  among  modern  humourists. 
Humourists,  so  luckily  common  in  life,  are  uncom- 
monly scarce  in  literature — the  reason  being  that 
the  intonation  and  the  gesture  of  the  living  man 
can  only  be  reproduced  by  writers  who  have  a  racy 
language  of  their  own.  Lawson  has  this  racy  lan- 
guage and  an  extremely  delicate  observation  of 
those  tiny  details  which  reveal  situation  and  char- 
acter. His  minute  appreciation  of  individual  pe- 
culiarities is  as  well  shown  in  the  sketch  "Mr. 
Smellingscheck"  as  is  his  power  of  idiomatic  lan- 
guage in  the  "Stiffner"  stories.  His  weakness  as 
an  artist  lies  chiefly  in  his  temptation  to  introduce 
sentimental  touches  that  mar  his  realism — see,  for 
example,  in  his  admirable  "Two  Larrykins"  and 
the  last  page  of  "Telling  Mrs.  Baker."  To  come 
back  to  my  main  point — that  Lawson  is  a  national 
writer,  of  whom  the  Australians  may  be  proud — I 
should  be  inclined  to  pair  him  with  Miss  Wilkins, 
who  is  also  a  national  writer,  if  I  did  not  find  that 
his  canvas,  his  range,  his  experience  of  life  are 
richer  and  wider  than  the  American  authoress's. 

['85] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

The  difference  between  the  two  writers  is  largely 
the  difference  of  masculine  and  feminine.  Miss 
Wilkins — none  better — can  describe  the  indoor 
life  of  women,  and  Lawson — none  better — the 
democratic  life  of  the  road,  the  bush,  the  track, 
the  shearer,  the  "selector,"  the  "pub,"  the  wharf, 
the  river,  and  the  street. 

If  Lawson's  tales  fail  to  live  in  another  fifty 
years — and  where  will  be  much  of  Kipling's, 
Stevenson's,  Hardy's,  and  Henry  James's  fiction 
then*? — it  will  be  because  they  have  too  little 
beauty  of  form,  and  there  is  too  much  crudity 
and  roughness  in  their  literary  substance. 
Henry  Lawson's  matter  is  more  interesting  than  his 
form,  and  matter  in  general  only  survives  through 
its  form.  This  admitted,  it  may  be  claimed  for 
Lawson  that  he  of  the  Australian  writers  best 
pictures  for  us  and  interprets  democratic  Australia 
today,  and  that  he  is  one  of  the  very  few  gen- 
uinely democratic  writers  that  the  literature  of 
"Greater  Britain"  can  show. 

1902. 


[186] 


SARAH    ORNE   JEWETT 


SARAH  ORNE  JEWETT'S  TALES 

IT  is  ten  years  since  a  London  publisher  pre- 
sented an  admirable  selection  of  Miss  Sarah 
Orne  Jewett's  stories  to  that  great  public  of 
ours  which  is,  and  may  well  be,  richer  in  its  oppor- 
tunities than  in  its  discernment.  "Tales  of  New 
England"  the  neat,  smooth,  green  volume  was  en- 
titled, but  though  its  little  band  of  enthusiastic 
readers  could  be  mustered  from  scattered  English 
homes,  many  of  the  copies  must  have  lain  retired 
from  the  world,  for  no  second  edition  of  the  Tales 
was  issued.  Some  of  its  readers  had  hailed  old 
friends  among  the  stories,  reprinted  from  the  mag- 
azine that  stood  for  the  best  traditions  in  Ameri- 
can literature — The  Atlaiitic  Monthly^  and  s/ome 
there  were  who  recognized  that  in  Miss  Jewett's 
exquisite  talent  America  had  gained  a  writer  who 
can  be  ranked  second  only  to  Hawthorne  in  her  in- 
terpretation of  the  spirit  of  New  England  soil. 
Since  that  quiet  uneventful  appearance  of  "New 
England  Tales"  among  us.  Miss  Jewett's  works 
liave  made  a  few  discreet  attempts  to  enlarge 
their  'modest   circle   of  English   readers.     "The 

[189] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

Country  of  the  Pointed  Firs,"  "A  Tory  Lover," 
"The  Queen's  Twin,"  "The  Life  of  Nancy,"  these 
books,  and  perhaps  others,  have  been  imported 
from  time  to  time  by  English  publishers  who 
have  placed  their  respected  imprints  on  the  River- 
side editions.  It  is  on  the  occasion  of  a  fresh 
announcement  by  a  London  publisher  of  an  Eng- 
lish edition  of  "The  King  of  Folly  Island,"  that 
I  venture  to  offer  here  a  slight  analysis  of  a  talent 
that  has  had  in  England  far  too  scanty  and  transi- 
tory attention  paid  it.  The  fault  has  been  on  the 
English  critics'  side.  Miss  Jewett's  talent  at  its 
best  is  so  quietly  delicate,  its  spiritual  aroma  so 
subtle,  that  to  come  to  it  is  like  coming  to  one  of 
the  quiet  sea  beaches  or  woody  hill-sides  of  Maine 
she  so  tenderly  describes  for  us.  "What  is  there 
to  stay  our  attention?"  the  readers  hardened  by  all 
the  insistent  effectiveness  and  unmitigated  empha- 
sis of  most  modern  novelists  may  ask  as  they  scan 
her  unassuming  pages.  And  in  truth  in  some  of 
Miss  Jewett's  early  writings,  as  "Old  Friends  and 
New,"  "A  Country  Doctor,"  "A  Marsh  Island," 
we  feel  that  a  certain  faint  charm  is  struggling 
unavailingly  with  an  artistic  method  too  monoto- 
nous; and  in  some  of  her  later  stories  she  has  also 
her  uninspired  hours,  where  her  subjects  of  com- 
mon daily  life  have  their  uninteresting  reaches 
[190] 


SARAH    ORNE    JEWETT 

and  stretches  which  defy  the  delicacy  of  her 
touch.  Moreover,  in  her  historical  novel,  "A 
Tory  Lover,"  she  has  clearly  stepped  outside  her 
own  art,  and  her  art  has  refused  definitely  to  ac- 
company her  on  this  hasty  excursion.  It  is  there- 
fore the  less  surprising  that  the  English  public 
should  have  failed  to  discover  and  acclaim  the 
exquisite  portion  of  her  work — let  me  sum  it  up 
here  as  thirty  little  masterpieces  in  the  short 
story,  and  one  book,  "The  Country  of  the 
Pointed  Firs," — by  which  I  believe  her  position 
is  permanently  assured  in  American  literature. 

By  what  special  excellence,  the  curious  reader 
will  ask,  is  the  province  of  Miss  Jewett's  art 
marked  out  as  a  country  set  apart  from  its  neigh- 
bours? By  a  peculiar  spirituality  which  her  work 
exhales,  a  spirituality  which  is  inseparable  from 
her  unerring  perception  of  her  country-people's 
native  outlook  and  instinctive  attitude  to  life.  It 
is  by  this  exquisite  spiritual  gravity  interpenetrat- 
ing with  the  finest  sense  of  humour,  intensely,  even 
maliciously  discriminating,  that  Miss  Jewett 
seems  to  speak  for  the  feminine  soul  of  the  New 
England  race.  Her  shade  of  humour  cannot  be 
described :  it  must  be  tasted  in  such  delicious  exam- 
ples as  "The  Only  Rose"  or  "The  Guests  of  Mrs. 
Timms,"  but  should  my  readers  ask  me  to  name 
[■9'] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

a  story  that  is  an  epitome  of  Miss  Jewett's  talent 
I  will  name  "Miss  Tempy's  Watchers"  as  an  ex- 
ample showing  the  finest  shades  of  her  quality. 
The  story  describes  how  two  women,  Mrs.  Crowe 
and  Sister  Binson,  are  sitting  up  as  watchers  in 
the  house  of  the  dead  woman,  Miss  Tempy,  the 
night  before  the  funeral.  The  slightly  eerie  rela- 
tion of  the  living  to  the  dead,  the  manner  in  which 
the  two  women  are  constrained  to  draw  close  to- 
gether in  outspoken  confidences,  and  the  way  the 
character  of  the  dead  woman  creates  the  powerful 
invisible  atmosphere  around  them  are  most  finely 
brought  out.  The  sketch  is  tender,  grave,  wholly 
spiritual  in  its  essence;  but  subtly  strong  is  the 
feeling  of  our  human  frailty,  lurking  in  these 
good  women's  private  chat.  It  is  the  taint  of  hu- 
man life's  appetites  and  human  life's  necessities 
that  is  so  finely  indicated  by  contrast  with  the  im- 
passive silence  of  the  dead.  Here  it  is  the  fine 
flower  of  the  Puritan  nature  that  speaks  in  Miss 
Jewett's  art,^  though  the  delight  she  takes  in  hu- 
man nature  as  human  nature  argues  perhaps  that 
she  has  inherited  some  artistic  strain  foreign  to 
the    Puritan.     A    clearness    of    phrase    almost 

1  In  a  charming  letter  received  by  the  writer  in  response  to 
this  criticism,  Miss  Jewett  declared  that  she  was  descended 
from   English   cavalier,   not   from  Puritan   stock. 

[192] 


SARAH   ORNE   JEWETT 

French  is  allied  indeed  to  her  innate  precision 
of  language.  Her  gift  for  characterization  is 
exceedingly  subtle,  but  neither  rich  nor  profound. 
Her  people  are  sketched  rather  in  their  essential 
outlines  than  in  their  exact  lineaments.  It  is 
puzzling  to  say  by  what  hidden  artistic  spell 
she  manages  so  craftily  to  indicate  human  char- 
acter— as  in  the  characters  of  William  and  Mrs. 
Hight  in  the  story,  "A  Dunnet  Shepherdess," 
but  after  a  few  subtle  hints  are  dropped  here 
and  there,  her  people  are  felt  to  be  living  an 
intensely  individual  life,  one  all  their  own, 
beyond  their  creator's  control  or  volition.  This 
gift  of  indicating  character  by  a  few  short 
simple  strokes  is  the  gift  of  the  masters.  Per- 
haps we  shall  touch  near  to  the  secret  of  Miss 
Jewett's  power  and  the  secret  of  her  limitations  if 
we  say  that  her  art  is  exceedingly  feminine  in  the 
sense  that  she  has  that  characteristically  feminine 
patience  with  human  nature  which  is  intimately 
enrooted  in  a  mother's  feeling.  Just  as  a  woman's 
criticism  of  the  people  near  and  dear  to  her  is  mod- 
ified by  her  instinctive  understanding  (shared  by 
man  in  a  far  fainter  degree)  that  nothing  will 
ever  change  them  radically,  so  Miss  Jewett's  ar- 
tistic attitude  shows  a  completely  sympathetic  pa- 
tience with  the  human  nature  she  has  watched  and 
[193] 


FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

carefully  scrutinized.  Her  gift  is  therefore  the 
gift  of  drawing  direct  from  nature,  with  an  exqui- 
site fidelity  to  what  appeals  to  her  feminine 
imagination — such  as  the  infinite  variety  of 
women's  perceptions  in  their  personal  relations; 
but  the  feniinine  insight  only  moves  along  the 
plane  of  her  sympathetic  appreciation,  and  she 
can  invent  nothing  outside  it,  neither  has  she  a 
depth  of  creative  feeling  apart  from  her  actual 
observation  of  human  life.  She  is  receptive  but 
not  constructive  in  her  talent.  It  is  for  this  rea- 
son that  her  historical  novel,  "A  Tory  Lover,"  is 
almost  a  complete  failure.  All  the  men  in  the 
book  are  masculine  ciphers,  and  its  real  hero,  Paul 
Jones,  never  begins  to  live.  On  the  other  hand, 
when  she  is  content  to  interpret  for  us  the  charac- 
teristic attitude  to  life  of  grimly  hard-working 
New  England  spinsters,  such  as  Miss  Peck,  in 
"Miss  Peck's  Promotion,"  or  broad  matronly  na- 
tures such  as  the  village  wife,  the  herb-gatherer, 
in  "The  Country  of  the  Pointed  Firs,"  we  get  a 
delicious  revelation  of  how  men  by  nature  play  the 
second  fiddle  in  women's  eyes.  Man  as  a  boy, 
a  lover,  a  husband,  brother,  father  or  friend,  with 
his  somewhat  obstrusive  personality  as  an  honest, 
well-meaning,  forceful  creature,  is  shown  us  as 
filling  up  woman's  mental  background  in  Miss 
[194] 


SARAH    ORNE    JEWETT 

Jewett's  stories;  but  woman  herself  it  is  that  de- 
cides, arranges  and  criticizes  her  own  life,  and  the 
life  of  her  friends,  enemies  and  relations,  and  of 
the  whole  parish — and  the  reader  has  a  sense  in 
her  pages  that  should  the  curtain  be  dropped  on 
the  feminine  understanding,  the  most  interesting 
side  of  life  would  become  a  mere  darkened  chaos 
to  the  isolated,  masculine  understanding, 

I  have  spoken  of  Miss  Jewett's  art  as  coming 
second  only  to  Hawthorne's  in  its  spiritual  inter- 
pretation of  the  New  England  character.  In  orig- 
inality of  vision,  and  in  intense  and  passionate 
creative  force  she  is,  of  course,  not  to  be  compared 
with  him.  The  range  of  her  insight  is  undenia- 
bly restricted.  Nevertheless,  it  makes  the  cos- 
mopolitan appeal,  that  all  art  of  high  quality 
makes,  and  her  work  at  its  best,  no  less  than  Haw- 
thorne's conveys  to  us  a  mysterious  sense  of  her 
country  people's  mental  and  moral  life,  seen  as  a 
whole  in  relation  to  their  environment  and  to  their 
past,  and  reveals  it  as  the  natural  growth  of  the 
very  definite  history  of  the  many  Puritan  genera- 
tions that  have  gone  before  them.  In  stories 
such  as  "Decoration  Day,"  'The  Hiltons'  Holi- 
day," "A  Dunnet  Shepherdess,"  and  in  scenes  in 
"The  Country  of  the  Pointed  Firs,"  such  as  "The 
Bowden  Reunion,"  and  "Shellheap  Island,"  her 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

art  attains  to  that  highest  perfection  of  litera- 
ture when  the  fleeting  passage  of  life  presented 
is  felt  in  its  invisible  relations  to  immense  reaches 
of  life  around  it,  in  which,  as  in  an  ocean,  it 
blends,  merges,  and  is  lost.  "The  Hiltons'  Holi- 
day," a  sketch,  describing  how  a  countryman 
drives  his  two  little  girls  on  a  summer's  day  to 
the  neighbouring  town  of  Topham  Corners,  is  an 
amazing  instance  of  how  broad  a  homely  record 
of  family  life  in  the  true  artist's  hands  can  sug- 
gest the  great  horizons  of  the  human  life  it  typi- 
fies. There  is  "nothing"  in  the  tale  and  yet 
there  is  everything — fatherhood,  motherhood,  the 
spirit  of  childhood — it  is  an  extraordinary  fine 
performance,  an  epitome  of  universal  family  life. 
Now  this  rare  poetic  breath  that  emanates  from 
Miss  Jewett's  homely  realism  is  her  artistic  re- 
ward for  caring  above  all  things  for  the  essential 
spiritual  reality  of  her  scenes,  and  for  departing 
not  a  hair's-breadth  from  its  prosaic  actualities. 
A  word  wrong,  a  note  untrue,  the  slightest  strain- 
ing after  effect,  and  the  natural  atmosphere  of 
scene  and  place  would  be  destroyed,  and  the  whole 
illusion  of  the  life  presented  would  be  shattered. 
Often,  of  course,  this  rare  poetic  breath  is  not 
found  enveloping  Miss  Jewett's  stories :  sometimes 
her  keen  sense  of  humour,  as  it  were,  keeps  it  at 

[196] 


SARAH   ORNE   JEWETT 

a  natural  distance,  as  in  "The  Passing  of  Sister 
Barsett,"  a  delicious  little  comedy  of  the  feminine 
soul;  and  occasionally  as  in  "The  King  of  Folly 
Island,"  we  feel  that  though  it  be  floating  around 
the  unobtrusive  spiritual  drama  of  the  misan- 
thropic George  Quint,  and  his  poor  daughter  Phe- 
be,  self-exiled  on  their  barren  island,  yet  it  fades 
away  a  little  soon,  since  the  author,  shown  by 
some  hesitation  in  her  technique,  has  not  quite  ar- 
rived at  the  point  of  absolute  unity  with  her 
subject.  It  is  indeed  by  the  extreme  rarity  of 
artists  showing  this  complete  spiritual  possession 
of  their  subjects,  that  we  must  explain  the  fact 
that  out  of  the  thousands  of  imaginative  writers 
each  generation  produces,  not  a  dozen  achieve  any 
subtle  perfection  in  the  quality  of  their  work. 
To  discover  intimately  the  subtle  laws  by  which 
individual  character  works,  to  catch  the  shifting 
shades  of  tone  by  which  a  man  reveals  to  the  on- 
looker how  life  is  affecting  him,  is  not  a  common 
gift;  but  to  reproduce  by  written  words  a  per- 
fect illusion,  a  perfect  mirage  of  life,  with  each 
character  seen  in  its  proper  perspective  in  a  just 
relation  to  the  exterior  world  around  it,  with 
everybody  breathing  his  natural  atmosphere  and  a 
general  sense  of  life's  inevitable  flux  and  flow  dif- 
fused through  the  whole — this  is  such  an  artistic 
['97] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

feat  that  we  need  not  wonder  that  Miss  Jewett 
has  succeeded  only  when  she  is  writing  as  a  close 
and  humble  student  of  nature.  Almost  anybody 
can  produce  an  arbitrary,  concocted  picture  of 
life  in  which  every  line  is  a  little  false,  and  every 
tone  is  exaggerated.  Such  pictures  of  life  are 
often  as  plausibly  interesting  as  the  scenes  of  a 
spirited  panorama.  They  serve  their  purpose. 
But  in  relation  to  the  rare  art  which  synthesizes 
for  us  the  living  delicacy  of  nature  they  are  what 
most  modern  popular  fiction  is  to  the  poetic  real- 
ism of  "The  Country  of  the  Pointed  Firs."  So 
delicate  is  the  artistic  lesson  of  this  little  master- 
piece that  it  will  probably  be  left  for  generations 
of  readers  less  hurried  than  ours  to  assimilate. 

1903 


[198] 


STEPHEN    CRANE 


STEPHEN  CRANE  AND  HIS  WORK 

A  SHORT  time  ago  I  picked  up  on  a  London 
book-stall,  the  first  edition  of  "The  Red 
Badge  of  Courage."  Its  price  was  six- 
pence. Obviously  the  bookseller  lay  no  store  by 
it,  for  the  book  had  been  thrown  on  the  top  of  a 
parcel  of  paper-covered  novels  among  the  waifs 
and  strays  of  literature.  Chancing  to  meet  a 
young  American  poet  I  asked  him,  curiously,  how 
his  countrymen  esteemed  today  that  intensely  orig- 
inal genius.  Crane,  the  creator  of  "The  Open 
Boat,"  "George's  Mother,"  "Maggie,"  "The 
Black  Riders."  He  answered,  "One  rarely  hears 
Crane's  name  mentioned  in  America.  His  work 
is  almost  forgotten,  but  I  believe  it  has  a  small, 
select  circle  of  admirers."  I  confess  I  was  amused, 
especially  when  a  little  later  a  first  edition  of  "Al- 
mayer's  Folly,"  the  first  Conrad,  was  sold  at  auc- 
tion for  five  hundred  times  the  amount  of  the  early 
Crane.  And  Conrad  was  also  amused  when  I  told 
him,  and  we  suggested  a  title  for  an  allegorical 
picture  yet  to  be  painted — the  Apotheosis  of  an 
Author  crowned  by  Fashion,  Merit  and  Midas. 
[201] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

For  we  both  had  in  mind  the  years  when  the 
critics  hailed  "The  Nigger  of  the  Narcissus"  as  a 
worthy  pendent  to  the  battle-pictures  presented 
in  "The  Red  Badge  of  Courage,"  and  when  Sir, 
then  Mr.  Arthur  Quiller-Couch  spoke  of  "The 
Nigger,"  as  "having  something  of  Crane's  in- 
sistence." 

We  talked  together  over  Crane  and  his  work 
and  cast  our  memories  back  over  twenty  years 
when  we  were  both  in  touch  with  "poor  Steve,"  he 
more  than  I.  And  we  agreed  that  within  its  pe- 
culiar limited  compass  Crane's  genius  was  unique. 
Crane,  when  living  at  Oxted,  was  a  neighbour  of 
mine,  and  one  day,  on  my  happening  to  describe 
to  him  an  ancient  Sussex  house,  noble  and  grey 
with  the  passage  of  five  hundred  years,  nothing 
would  satisfy  him  but  that  he  must  become  the 
tenant  of  Brede  Place.  It  was  the  lure  of  ro- 
mance that  always  thrilled  Crane's  blood,  and 
Brede  Place  had  had  indeed,  an  unlucky,  cheq- 
uered history.  I  saw  Crane  last,  when  he  lay  dy- 
ing there,  the  day  before  his  wife  was  transporting 
him,  on  a  stretcher  bed,  to  a  health  resort  in  the 
Black  Forest,  in  a  vain  effort  to  arrest  the  fatal 
disease,  and  I  see  again  his  bloodless  face  and  the 
burning  intensity  of  his  eyes.  He  had  lived  at 
too  high  pressure  and  his  consumptive  physique 

[202] 


STEPHEN   CRANE 

was  ravaged  by  the  exhausting  strain  of  his  pas- 
sionate life,  and  sapped  by  the  hardships  of  the 
Cuban  campaign,  which  he  suffered  as  a  war- 
correspondent.  Crane's  strange  eyes,  with  their 
intensely  concentrated  gaze,  were  those  of  a  genius 
and  I  recall  how  on  his  first  visit  to  our  house  I 
was  so  struck  by  the  exquisite  symmetry  of  his 
brow  and  temples,  that  I  failed  to  note,  what  a 
lady  pointed  out  when  he  had  left,  the  looseness 
of  his  mouth.  Yes,  the  intensity  of  genius  burned 
in  his  eyes,  and  his  weak  lips  betrayed  his  un- 
restrained temperament.  Crane's  genius,  his  feel-  ' 
ing  for  style  were  wholly  intuitive  and  no  study  / 
had  fostered  them.  On  first  reading  "The  Red 
Badge  of  Courage,"  I  concluded  he  had  been  in-  A 
fluenced  by  the  Russian  masters,  but  I  learned  1  ^  ^ 
when  I  met  him,  that  he  had  never  read  a  line  of  j  ij  /\*  \ 
them.  Would  that  he  had!  For  Crane,  as  Con- 
rad reminded  me,  never  knew  how  good  his  best 
work  was.  He  simply  never  knew.  He  never 
recognized  that  in  the  volume  "The  Open  Boat," 
he  had  achieved  the  perfection  of  his  method.  If 
he  had  comprehended  that  in  "The  Bride  Comes 
to  Yellow  Sky"  and  in  "Death  and  the  Child"  he 
had  attained  then,  his  high  water  mark,  he  might 
perhaps  have  worked  forward  along  the  lines  of 
patient,  ascending  effort;  but  after  "The  Open 
[203] 


-D 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

Boat,"  1898,  his  work  dropped  to  lower  levels. 
He  wrote  too  much,  he  wrote  against  time,  and 
he  wrote  while  dunned  for  money.  At  first  sight 
it  appears  astonishing  that  the  creator  of  such  a 
miracle  of  style  as  "The  Bride  Comes  to  Yellow 
Sky"  should  publish  in  the  same  year  so  mediocre 
a  novel  as  "On  Active  Service."  But  Crane  ought 
never  to  have  essayed  the  form  of  the  novel.  He 
had  not  handled  it  satisfactorily  in  "The  Third 
Violet,"  1897,  a  love  story  charming  in  its  im- 
pressionistic lightness  of  touch,  but  lacking  in 
force,  in  concentration,  in  characterization.  My 
view  of  Crane  as  a  born  impressionist  and  master 
of  the  short  story,  I  emphasized  in  an  Apprecia- 
tion in  1898,  and  since  it  is  germane  to  my  pur- 
pose here,  I  reprint  the  criticism: — 

MR.    STEPHEN    CRANE 
AN    APPRECIATION 

•^  "What  Mr.  Crane  has  got  to  do  is  very  simple: 
he  must  not  mix  reporting  with  his  writing.  To 
other  artists  the  word  must  often  be  passed :  rest, 
work  at  your  art,  live  more;  but  Mr. 
Crane  has  no  need  of  cultivating  his  tech- 
nique, no  need  of  resting,  no  need  of  search- 
[204] 


STEPHEN   CRANE 

ing  wide  tor  experiences.  In  his  art  he  is 
unique.  Its  certainty,  its  justness,  its  peculiar 
perfection  of  power  arrived  at  its  birth,  or  at 
least  at  that  precise  moment  in  its  life  when  other 
artists — and  great  artists  too — were  preparing 
themselves  for  the  long  and  difficult  conquest  of 
their  art.  I  cannot  remember  p.  parallel  case 
in  the  literary  history  of  fiction.  Maupassant, 
Meredith,  Mr.  James,  Mr.  Howells,  Tolstoy,  all 
were  learning  their  expression  at  the  age  where  Mr. 
Crane  had  achieved  his,  achieved  it  triumphantly. 
Mr.  Crane  has  no  need  to  learn  anything.  Hisi 
technique  is  absolutely  his  own,  and  by  its  innatei 
laws  of  being  has  arrived  at  a  perfect  fulness  ofl 
power.  What  he  has  not  got  he  has  no  power  of 
acquiring.  He  has  no  need  to  acquire  it.  To  say 
to  Mr.  Crane,  'You  are  too  much  anything,  or 
too  little  anything;  you  need  concentration,  or 
depth,  subtlety,  or  restraint,'  would  be  absurd; 
his  art  is  just  in  itself,  rhythmical,  self-poising^ 
as  is  the  art  of  a  perfect  dancer.  There  are  no 
false  steps,  no  excesses.  And,  of  course,  his  art 
is  strictly  limited.  We  would  define  him  by  say- ' 
ing  he  is  the  perfect  artist  and  interpreter  of  the' 
slirfaces  of  life.  And  that  explains  why  he  so 
swiftly  attained  his  peculiar  power,  and  what  is 
the  realm  his  art  commands,  and  his  limitations. 


/ 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

"Take  'George's  Mother,'  for  example — a  tale 
which  I  believe  he  wrote  at  the  ridiculous  age  of 
twenty-one.  In  method  it  is  a  masterpiece.  It 
is  a  story  dealing  simply  with  the  relations  be- 
tween an  old  woman  and  her  son,  who  live  to- 
gether in  a  New  York  tenement  block.  An  ordi- 
nary artist  would  seek  to  dive  into  the  mind  of  the 
old  woman,  to  follow  its  workings  hidden  under 
the  deceitful  appearances  of  things,  under  the  pres- 
sure of  her  surroundings.  A  great  artist  would  so 
recreate  her  life  that  its  griefs  and  joys  became 
significant  of  the  griefs  and  joys  of  all  motherhood 
on  earth.  But  Mr.  Crane  does  neither.  He 
simply  reproduces  the  surfaces  of  the  individual 
life  in  so  marvellous  a  way  that  the  manner  in 
which  the  old  woman  washes  up  the  crockery,  for 
example,  gives  us  the  essentials.  To  dive  into  the 
hidden  life  is,  of  course,  for  the  artist  a  great  temp- 
tation and  a  great  danger — the  values  of  the  pic- 
ture speedily  get  wrong,  and  the  artist,  seeking  to 
interpret  life,  departs  from  the  truth  of  nature. 
The  rare  thing  about  Mr.  Crane's  art  is  that  he 
keeps  closer  to  the  surface  than  any  living  writer, 
and,  like  the  great  portrait-painters,  to  a  great  ex- 
\  tent  makes  the  surface  betray  the  depths.  But,  of 
course,  the  written  word  in  the  hands  of  the  great- 
est artist  often  deals  directly  with  the  depths, 
[206] 


STEPHEN    CRANE 

plunges  us  into  the  rich  depths  of  consciousness 
that  cannot  be  more  than  hinted  at  by  the  surface ; 
and  it  is  precisely  kere  that  Mr.  Crane's  natural 
limitation  must  come  in.  At  the  supreme  height 
of  art  the  great  masters  so  plough  up  the  depths 
of  life  that  the  astonished  spectator  loses  sight 
of  the  individual  life  altogether,  and  has  the  en- 
trancing sense  that  all  life  is  really  one  and  the 
same  thing,  and  is  there  manifesting  itself  before 
him.  He  feels  that,  for  example,  when  he 
watches  Duse  at  her  best,  or  when  he  stands  before 
Leonardo  da  Vinci's  'La  Joconda'  in  the  Louvre 
and  is  absorbed  by  it.  I  do  not  think  that  Mr. 
/Crane  is  ever  great  in  the  sense  of  so  fusing 
all  the  riches  of  the  consciousness  into  a  whole, 
I  that  the  reader  is  struck  dumb  as  by  an  inevitable 
revelation;  but  he  is  undoubtedly  such  an  inter- 
preter of  the  significant  surface  of  things  that  in 
\  a  few  strokes  he  gives  us  an  amazing  insight  into 
what  the  individual  life  is.  And  he  does  it  all 
straight  from  the  surface;  a  few  oaths,  a  genius 
for  slang,  an  exquisite  and  unique  faculty  of  ex- 
posing an  individual  scene  by  an  odd  simile,  a 
powei  of  interpreting  a  face  or  an  action,  a  keen 
irealizing  of  the  primitive  emotions — that  is  Mr. 
Crane's  talent.  In  'The  Bride  Comes  to  Yellow 
Sky,'   for  example,   the  art  is  simply  immense. 

[207] 


./ 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

There  is  a  page  and  a  half  of  conversation  at  the 
end  of  this  short  story  of  seventeen  pages  which, 
as  a  dialogue  revealing  the  whole  inside  of  the  sit- 
uation, is  a  lesson  to  any  artist  living.     And  the 
last  line  of  this  story,  by  the  gift  peculiar  to  the 
-  author  of  using  some  odd  simile  which  cunningly 
[^  condenses  the  feeling  of  the  situation,  defies  anal- 
j  ysis   altogether.     Foolish  people   may   call   Mr. 
Crane  a  reporter  of  genius ;  but  nothing  could  be 
more  untrue.     He  is  thrown  away  as  a  pictur- 
esque reporter :  a  secondary  style  of  art,  of  which, 
let  US'  say,  Mr.  G.  W.  Steevens  is,  perhaps,  the 
ablest  exponent  of  today,  and  which  is  the  heavy 
clay  of  Mr.  Kipling's  talent.     Mr.  Crane's  tech- 
nique is  far  superior  to  Mr.  Kipling's,  but  he  does 
I  not  experiment  ambitiously  in  various  styles  and 
I  develop  in  new   directions  as   Mr.   Kipling  has 
\done.     I  do  not  think  that  Mr.  Crane  will  or  can 
develop  further.     Again,  I  do  not  think  he  has 
the  building  faculty,  or  that  he  will  ever  do  bet- 
ter in  constructing  a  perfect  whole  out  of  many 
parts  than  he  has  arrived  at  in  'The  Red  Badge 
fp{  Courage.'     That  book  was  a  series  of  episodic 
scenes,   all   melting  naturally   into  one   another 
(and  forming  a  just  whole;  but  it  was  not  con- 
|i  structed,  in  any  sense  of  the  word.     And  further, 
Mr.    Crane    does    not    show    any    facultv    of 

[208] 


STEPHEN    CRANE 

'taking  his  characters  and  revealing  in  them 
deep  mysterious  worlds  of  human  nature,  of 
developing  fresh  riches  in  them,  acting  under 
the  pressure  of  circumstance.  His  imaginative 
analysis  ot  his  own  nature  on  a  battlefield 
is,  of  course,  the  one  exception.  And  similarly 
the  great  artist's  arrangement  of  complex  effects, 
striking  contrasts,  exquisite  grouping  of  devices, 
is  lacking  in  him.  His  art  does  not  include  the 
necessity  for  complex  arrangements;  his  sure 
instinct  tells  him  never  to  quit  the  passing 
moment  of  life,  to  hold  fast  by  simple 
situations,  to  reproduce  the  episodic,  frag- 
mentary nature  of  life  in  such  artistic  sequence 

I  that  it  stands  in  place  of  the  architectural  masses 
and  co-ordinated  structures  of  the  great  artists. 
He  is  the  chief  impressionist  of  our  day  as  Sterne"^ 
was  the  great  impressionist,  in  a  different  manner,  J 
of  his  day.     If  he  fails  in  anything  he  undertakes, 

/  it  will  be  through  abandoning  the  style  he  has 

I  invented.  He  may,  perhaps,  fail  by  and  by, 
through  using  up  the  picturesque  phases  of  the 
environment  that  nurtured  him,  as  Swinburne 
came  to  a  stop  directly  he  had  rung  the  changes  a 
certain  number  of  times  on  the  fresh  rhythms  and' 
phrases  he  had  created.  But  that  time  is  not  yet, 
and  every  artist  of  a  special  unique  faculty  has 
[209] 


/ 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

that  prospect  before  him.  Mr.  Crane's  talent  is 
unique;  nobody  can  question  that.  America  may 
well  be  proud  of  him,  for  he  has  just  that  perfect 
mastery  of  form  which  artists  of  the  Latin  races 
often  produce,  but  the  Teutonic  and  Anglo-Saxon 
races  very  rarely.  And  undoubtedly  of  the  young 
school  of  American  artists  Mr.  Crane  is  the  gen- 
ius— the  others  have  their  talents." 

On  the  above  criticism  Conrad  wrote  me  at  the 
time,  "The  Crane  thing  is  just — precisely  just 
a  ray  of  light  flashed  in  and  showing  all  there 
is." 

II 

But  when  I  wrote  that  criticism,  that  journal- 
istic novel  "On  Active  Service"  was  yet  to  be  pub- 
lished, and  I  did  not  fully  comprehend  Crane's 
training  and  his  circumstances.  I  sounded  a 
warning  note  against  "reporting,"  but  though  he 
had  emerged  from  journalism,  he  was  still  haunted 
by  journalism  and  was  encircled  by  a — well !  by  a 
crew  of  journalists.  I  remarked,  "I  do  not  think 
Mr.  Crane  can  or  will  develop  further,"  but  pres- 
sing him  were  duns  and  debts  and  beckoning  him 
was  the  glamour  of  the  war-correspondent's  life, 
and  before  him  were  editors  ready  for  ephemeral 
[210] 


STEPHEN    CRANE 

stuff,  while  they  shook  their  heads  sadly  over  such 
perfect  gems  as  "The  Pace  of  Youth."  Crane 
had  seen  much  for  a  man  of  his  years,  but  he  was 
still  thirsting  for  adventure  and  the  life  of  action, 
and  he  had  no  time  to  digest  his  experiences,  to  re- 
flect, to  incubate  and  fashion  his  work  at  leisure. 
In  the  two  or  three  hurried  years  that  remained 
to  him  after  the  publication  of  "The  Open  Boat," 
he  created  some  notable  things,  but  the  dice  of  fate 
were  loaded  by  all  his  circumstances  against  his 
development  as  craftsman. 

We  must  therefore  be  thankful  that  his  instinct 
for  style  emerged  when  his  psychological  genius 
broke  out  and  so  often  possessed  him  in  the  teeth 
of  the  great  stucco  gods  and  the  chinking  of  brass 
in  the  market  place.  He  had  written  his  best 
things  without  advice  or  encouragement,  urged 
by  the  demon  within  him,  and  his  genius  burned 
clear,  with  its  passionate  individuality,  defy- 
ing all  the  inhibitions  and  conventions  of  New 
England.  Was  that  genius  ever  appreciated  by 
America?  I  doubt  it,  though  Americans  were 
forced  to  accept  him,  first  because  of  the  fame 
which  "The  Red  Badge  of  Courage"  brought 
Crane  in  England,  and  secondary  because  his 
subject  wag  the  American  Civil  War,  a  subject 
that  could  not  be  disregarded.  On  re-reading 
[21.] 


FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

"The  Red  Badge  of  Courage"  I  am  more  than 
ever  struck  by  the  genius  with  which  Crane, 
in  imagination,  pierced  to  the  essentials  of  War. 
Without  any  experience  of  war  at  the  time, 
Crane  was  essentially  true  to  the  psychological 
core  of  war — if  not  to  actualities.  He  nat- 
urally underestimated  the  checks  placed  by  phys- 
;  ical  strain  and  fatigue  on  the  faculties,  as  well  as 
j.  war's  malignant,  cold  ironies,  its  prosaic  dreadful- 
/  ness,  its  dreary,  deadening  tedium.  But  as  Goethe 
has  pointed  out,  the  artist  has  a  license  to  ignore 
actualities,  if  he  is  obeying  inner,  aesthetic  laws. 
And  Crane's  subject  was  the  passions,  the  passions 
of  destruction,  fear,  pride,  rage,  shame  and  exal- 
tation in  the  heat  of  action.  The  deep  artistic 
unity  of  "The  Red  Badge  of  Courage,"  is  fused 
in  its  flaming,  spiritual  intensity,  in  the  fiery  ar- 
dour with  which  the  shock  of  the  Federal  and  Con- 
federate armies  is  imaged.  The  torrential  force 
and  impetus,  the  check,  sullen  recoil  and  reform- 
ing of  shattered  regiments,  and  the  renewed  on- 
slaught and  obstinate  resistance  of  brigades  and 
divisions  are  visualized  with  extraordinary  force 
and  colour.  If  the  sordid  grimness  of  carnage, 
is  partially  screened,  the  feeling  of  War's  cumula- 
tive rapacity,  of  its  breaking  pressure  and  fluc- 
tuating tension  is  caught  with  wonderful  fervour 
[2U] 


STEPHEN   CRANE 

and  freshness  of  style.  It  is  of  course,  the  work 
of  ardent  youth,  but  when  Crane  returned  from 
the  Graeco-Turkish  war  he  said  to  Conrad,  "My 
picture  of  war  was  all  right !  I  have  found  it  as  I 
imagined  it."  And  his  imaginative  picture  he 
supplemented,  four  years  later,  in  that  penetrat- 
ing, sombre,  realistic  piece  "Memories  of  War"  in 
"Wounds  in  the  Rain,"  his  reminiscences  of  the 
Cuban  campaign  that  in  fact  had  set  death's  secret 
mark  already  on  him.  I  may  note,  too,  how 
Crane,  sitting  in  our  garden,  described  that  on 
questioning  Veterans  of  the  Civil  War  about  their 
feelings  when  fighting,  he  could  get  nothing  out 
of  them  but  one  thing,  viz.,  "We  just  went  there 
and  did  so  and  so." 

Ill 

And  here  I  must  enlarge  and  amend  my  criti- 
cism of  1898  by  saying  that  two  qualities  in  es- 
pecial, combined  to  form  Crane's  unique  quality, 
viz  his  wonderful  insight  into,  and  mastery  of  the 
primary  passions,  and  his  irony  deriding  the 
swelling  emotions  of  the  self.  It  is  his  irony 
that  checks  the  emotional  intensity  of  his  deline- 
ation, and  suddenly  reveals  passion  at  high 
tension  in  the  clutch  of  the  implacable  tides 
of  life.  It  is'  the  perfect  fusion  of  these  two 
[213] 


•^ 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

forces  of  passion  and  irony  that  creates  Crane's 
spiritual  background,  and  raises  his  work,  at 
its  finest,  into  the  higher  zone  of  man's  tragic 
conflict  with  the  universe.  His  irony  is  seen 
in  its  purest  form  in  "Black  Riders,"  1896, 
a  tiny  collection  of  vers  Ubres,  as  sharp  in 
their  naked  questioning  as  sword  blades.  These 
verses  pierce  with  dreadful  simplicity  certain 
illusions  of  unregarding  sages,  whose  earnest 
commentaries  pour,  and  will  continue  to  pour 
from  the  groaning  press.  In  "Maggie,"  1896, 
that  little  masterpiece  which  drew  the  highest  trib- 
ute from  the  veteran,  W.  D.  Howells,  again  it  is 
the  irony  that  keeps  in  right  perspective  Crane's 
remorseless  study  of  New  York  slum  and  Bowery 
morals.  The  code  of  herd  law  by  which  the  in- 
experienced girl,  Maggie,  is  pressed  to  death  by 
her  family,  her  lover  and  the  neighbours,  is  seen 
working  with  strange  finality.  The  Bowery  in- 
habitants, as. we,  can  be  nothing  other  than  what 
they  are;  their  human  nature  responds  inexorably 
to  their  brutal  environment;  the  curious  habits 
and  code  of  the  most  primitive  savage  tribes 
could  not  be  presented  with  a  more  impartial  ex- 
actness, or  with  more  sympathetic  understanding. 
"Maggie"  is  not  a  story  about  people;  it  is  prim- 
itive human  nature  itself  set  down  with  perfect 
[214] 


STEPHEN    CRANE 

spontaneity  and  grace  of  handling.  For  pure 
aesthetic  beauty  and  truth  no  Russian,  not  Tche- 
hov  himself,  could  have  bettered  this  study,  which, 
as  Howells  remarks,  has  the  quality  of  Greek 
tragedy.  The  perfection  of  Crane's  style,  his 
unique  quality,  can,  however,  be  studied  best  in 
"The  Open  Boat,"  1898.  Here  he  is  again  the 
pure  artist,  brilliant,  remorselessly  keen,  delight- 
ing in  life's  passions  and  ironies,  amusing,  tragic 
or  grimacing.  Consider  the  nervous  audacity, 
in  phrasing,  of  the  piece  "An  Experiment  in  Mis- 
ery," which  reveals  the  quality  of  chiaroscuro  of 
a  master's  etching.  No  wonder  the  New  York 
editors  looked  askance  at  such  a  break  with  tra- 
dition. How  would  they  welcome  the  mocking 
verve  and  sinister  undertone  of  such  pieces  as  "A 
Man  and  Some  Others,"  or  the  airy  freshness  and 
flying  spontaneity  of  "The  Pace  of  Youth"?  In 
the  volume  "The  Open  Boat"  Crane's  style  has  a 
brilliancy  of  tone,  a  charming  timbre  peculiar  to 
itself.  As  with  Whistler,  his  personal  note  es- 
chews everything  obvious,  everything  inessential, 
as  witness  "Death  and  the  Child,"  that  haunting 
masterpiece  where  a  child  is  playing  with  pebbles 
and  sticks  on  the  great  mountain-side,  while  the 
smoke  and  din  of  the  battlefield,  in  the  plain  be- 
low, hide  the  rival  armies  of  pigmy  men  busy  reap- 


FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

ing  with  death.  It  is  in  the  calm  detachment  of 
the  little  child  playing,  by  which  the  artist  se- 
cures his  poetic  background;  man,  pigmy  man, 
watched  impassively  by  the  vast  horizons  of  life, 
is  the  plaything  of  the  Fates.  The  irony  of  life 
is  here  implicit.  Perfect  also  is  that  marvel  of 
felicitous  observation  "An  Ominous  Babe," 
where  each  touch  is  exquisitely  final;  a  sketch  in 
which  the  instincts  of  the  babes  betray  the  roots 
of  all  wars,  past  and  to  come.  This  gem  ought 
to  be  in  every  anthology-  of  American  prose. 

The  descent  of  Crane  in  "On  Active  Service" 
1898,  to  a  clever,  journalistic  level,  was  strange. 
It  was  a  lapse  into  superficiality;  much  stronger 
artistically  was  "The  Monster,"  1901,  a  book  of 
stories  of  high  psychological  interest,  which  might 
indeed  have  made  another  man's  reputation,  but 
a  book  which  is  ordinary  in  atmosphere.  The 
story  "The  Blue  Hotel"  is,  indeed,  a  brilliant 
exploration  of  fear  and  its  reactions,  and  "His 
New  Mittens"  is  a  delightful  graphic  study  of  boy 
morals,  but  we  note  that  when  Crane  breathes  an 
every-day,  common  atmosphere  his  aesthetic  power 
always  weakens.  One  would  give  the  whole  con- 
tents of  "Whilomville  Stories,"  1902,  for  the  five 
pages  of  "An  Ominous  Baby" ;  and  the  heteroge- 
neous contents  of  "Last  Words,"  1902,  a  volume 

[216] 


STEPHEN    CRANE 

of  sweepings  from  Crane's  desk,  kick  the  balance 
when  weighed  against  the  sketch  "A  Tale  of  Mere 
Chance,"  the  babblings  of  a  madman,  which  Dos- 
toevsky  might  be  proud  to  claim.  The  compan- 
ion sketch  "Manacled"  (in  "The  Monster")  bears 
also  the  authentic  stamp  of  Crane's  rare  vision. 
To  conclude,  if  America  has  forgotten  or  neg- 
lects Crane's  achievements,  above  all  in  "Maggie" 
and  "The  Open  Boat,"  she  does  not  yet  deserve 
to  produce  artists  of  rank.  Crane  holds  a  peculiar 
niche  in  American  literature.  Where  it  is  weak, 
viz  in  the  aesthetic  and  psychologically  truthful 
delineation  of  passion,  Stephen  Crane  is  a  master. 
And  masters  are  rare,  yes  how  rare  are  masters,  let 
the  men  of  Crane's  generation,  looking  back  on  the 
twenty  years  since  his  death,  decide. 

1921 


^ 


[^•7] 


ROBERT    FROST 


ROBERT  FROST'S  "NORTH  OF  BOSTON" 


A  SHORT  time  ago  I  found  on  a  London 
book-stall  an  odd  number  of  The  Poetry 
RevJcit;  with  examples  of  and  comments 
on  "Modern  American  Poets," — examples  which 
whetted  my  curiosity.  But  the  few  quotations 
given  appeared  to  me  literary  bric-a-brac,  the  fruit 
of  light  liaisons  between  American  dilettantism 
and  European  models.  Such  poetry,  esthetic  or 
sentimental, — reflections  of  vagrant  influences, 
lyrical  embroideries  in  the  latest  designs,  with 
little  imaginative  insight  into  life  or  nature, — 
abounds  in  every  generation.  If  sufficiently 
bizarre  its  pretentions  are  cried  up  in  small  Bo- 
hemian coteries;  if  sufficiently  orthodox  in  tone 
and  form,  it  may  impress  itself  on  that  public 
which  reads  poetry  as  it  looks  idly  at  pictures, 
with  sentimental  appetite  or  from  a  vague  re- 
spect for  culture.  Next  I  turned  to  some  Amer- 
ican magazines  at  hand,  and  was  brought  to  a 
pause  by  discovering  some  interesting  verse  by 
[221] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

modern  American  poets,  especially  by  women 
whose  sincerity  in  the  expression  of  the  inner  life 
of  love  compared  well  with  the  ambitious  flights 
of  some  of  their  rivals.  I  learned  indeed  from  a 
magazine  article  that  the  "New  Poetry"  was 
in  process  of  being  hatched  out  by  the  younger 
school;  and,  no  doubt,  further  researches  would 
have  yielded  a  harvest,  had  not  a  literary 
friend  chanced  to  place  in  my  hands  a  slim 
green  volume,  "North  of  Boston,"  by  Robert 
Frost. ^  I  read  it,  and  reread  it.  It  seemed  to  me 
that  this  poet  was  destined  to  take  a  permanent 
place  in  American  literature.  I  asked  myself 
why  this  book  was  issued  by  an  English  and  not  by 
an  American  publisher.  And  to  this  question  I 
have  found  no  answer.^  I  may  add  here,  in  paren- 
thesis, that  I  know  nothing  of  Mr.  Robert  Frost 
save  the  three  or  four  particulars  I  gleaned  from 
the  English  friend  who  sent  me  "North  of  Bos- 
ton." 

In  an  illuminating  paper  on  recent  American 
fiction,  Mr.  W.  D.  Howells  remarks,  "By  test  of 
the  native  touch  we  should  not  find  genuine  some 

1  This   essay   appeared    in    The  Atlantic  Monthly,   under  the 
title  of  "A  New  American  Poet." 

2  An   American    edition    published    by   Henry    Holt   and   Co., 
followed  the  English  edition. 

[222] 


ROBERT    FROST 

of  the  American  writers  whom  Mr.  Garnett  ac- 
counts so."  No  doubt  Mr.  Howells's  stricture  is 
just,  and  certain  American  novelists — whom  he 
does  not  however  particularize — have  been  too 
affected  in  spirit  by  European  models.  Indeed 
Frank  Norris's  early  work,  "Vandover  and  the 
Brute,"  is  quite  continental  in  tone ;  and  it  is  argu- 
able that  Norris's  study  of  the  French  Natural- 
ists may  have  shown  beneficial  results  later  in 
the  breadth  of  scheme  and  clarity  of  "The  Pit." 

This  point  of  "the  native  touch"  raises  difficult 
questions,  for  the  ferment  of  foreign  influence  has 
often  marked  the  point  of  departure  and  rise  of 
powerful  native  writers,  such  as  Pushkin  in  Rus- 
sia and  Fenimore  Cooper  in  America.  Again,  if 
we  consider  the  fiction  of  Poe  and  Herman  Mel- 
ville, would  it  not  be  difficult  to  assess  their 
genuineness  by  any  standard  or  measure  of  "na- 
tive touch"?  But  I  take  it  that  Mr.  Howells 
would  ban  as  "not  genuine"  only  those  writers 
whose  orginality  in  vision,  tone,  and  style  has  been 
patently  marred  or  nullified  by  their  surrender 
to  exotic  influences. 

So  complex  may  be  the  interlacing  strains  that 
blend  in  a  writer's  literary  ancestry  and  deter- 
mine his  style,  that  the  question  first  to  ask  seems 
to  me  whether  a  given  author  is  a  fresh  creative 
[223] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

force,  an  original  voice  in  literature.  Such  an 
authentic  original  force  to  me  speaks  from  "North 
of  Boston."  Surely  a  genuine  New  England  voice, 
whatever  be  its  literary  debt  to  old-world  Eng- 
lish ancestr}'.  Originality,  the  point  is  there, — 
for  we  may  note  that  orginality  of  tone  and  vision 
is  always  the  stumbling-block  to  the  common 
taste  when  the  latter  is  invited  to  readjust  its  ac- 
cepted standards. 

On  opening  "North  of  Boston"  we  see  the  first 
lines  to  be  stamped  with  the  magic  of  style^  of  a 
style  that  obeys  its  own  laws  of  grace  and  beauty 
and  inner  harmony. 

Something  there  is  that  doesn't  love  a  wall, 
That  sends  the  frozen  ground-swell  under  it, 
And  spills  the  upper  boulders  in  the  sun : 
And  makes  gaps  even  two  can  pass  abreast, 
The  work  of  hunters  is  another  thing : 
I  have  come  after  them  and  made  repair 
Where  they  have  left  not  one  stone  on  stone, 
But  they  would  have  the  rabbit  out  of  hiding. 
To  please  the  yelping  dogs.  .  .  . 

Note  the  clarity  of  the  images,  the  firm  outline. 

How  delicately  the  unobstrusive  opening  suggests 

the  countryman's  contemplative  pleasure  in  his 

fields  and  woods.     It  seems  so  very  quiet,  the  mod- 

[224] 


ROBERT    FROST 

em  reader  may  complain,  forgetting  Wordsworth; 
and  indeed,  had  Wordsworth  written  these  lines, 
I  think  they  must  have  stood  in  every  English  an- 
thology. And  when  we  turn  the  page,  the  second 
poem,  "The  Death  of  the  Hired  Man,"  proves  that 
this  American  poet  has  arrived,  not  indeed  to  chal- 
lenge the  English  poet's  possession  of  his  territory, 
but  to  show  how  untrodden,  how  limitless  are  the 
stretching,  adjacent  lands.  "The  Death  of  the 
Hired  Man"  is  a  dramatic  dialogue  between  hus- 
band and  wife,  a  dialogue  characterized  by  an  ex- 
quisite precision  of  psychological  insight.  I  note 
that  two  college  professors  have  lately  been  taking 
Mr.  Ruckstuhl  to  task  for  a  new  definition  of  po- 
etry. Let  us  fly  all  such  debates,  following 
Goethe,  who,  condemning  the  "aesthete  who  la- 
bours to  express  the  nature  of  poetry  and  of  poets," 
exclaimed,  "What  do  we  want  with  so  much  def- 
inition? A  lively  feeling  of  situations  and  an 
aptitude  to  describe  them  makes  the  poet."  This 
definition,  though  it  does  not  cover  the  whole 
ground,  is  apropos  to  our  purpose, 

Mr.  Frost  possesses  a  keen  feeling  for  situation. 
And  his  fine,  sure  touch  in  clarifying  our  obscure 
instincts  and  clashing  impulses,  and  in  crystalliz- 
ing them  in  sharp,  precise  images, — for  that  we 
[225] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

cannot  be  too  grateful.  Observe  the  tense,  simple 
dramatic  action,  foreshadowing  conflict,  in  the 
opening  lines  of  "The  Death  of  the  Hired  Man" : 

Mary  sat  musing  on  the  lamp-flame  at  the  table 
Waiting  for  Warren.     When  she   heard  his   step, 
She  ran  on  tip-toe  down  the  darkened  passage 
To  meet  him  in  the  door  way  with  the  news 
And  put  him  on  his  guard.     "Silas  is  back." 
She  pushed  him  outward  with  her  through  the  door 
And  shut  it  after  her.     "Be  kind,"  she  said. 

"It's  we  who  must  be  good  to  him  now,"  she 
urges.  I  wish  I  had  space  to  quote  the  debates  so 
simple  in  its  homely  force,  so  comprehending  in  its 
spiritual  veracity;  but  I  must  restrict  myself  to 
these  arresting  lines  and  to  the  hushed,  tragic 
close : — 

Part  of  a  moon  was  falling  down  the  west 
Dragging  the  whole  sky  with  it  to  the  hills. 
Its  light  poured  softly  in  her  lap.     She  saw 
And  spread  her  apron  to  it.     She  put  out  her  hand 
Among  the  harp-like  morning-glory  strings 
Taut  with  the  dew  from  garden  bed  to  eaves. 
As  if  she  played  unheard  the  tenderness 
That  wrought  on  him  beside  her  in  the  night. 
"Warren,"  she  said,  "he  has  come  home  to  die : 
You  needn't  be  afraid  he'll  leave  you  this  time." 
[226] 


ROBERT    FROST 

"Home,"  he  mocked  gently. 

"Yes,  what  else  but  home  ? 
It  all  depends  on  what  you  mean  by  home. 
Of  course  he's  nothing  to  us,  any  more 
Than  was  the  hound  that  came  a  stranger  to  us 
Out  of  the  woods,  worn  out  upon  the  trail." 
"Home  is  the  place  where,  when  you  have  to  go  there, 
They  have  to  take  you  in." 

"I  should  have  called  it 
Something  you  somehow  haven't  to  deserve." 
"You'll  be  surprised  at  him — how  much  he's  broken, 
His  working  days  are  done ;  I'm  sure  of  it." 
"I'd  not  be  in  a  hurry  to  say  that." 
"I  haven't  been.     Go,  look,  see  for  yourself. 
But,  Warren,  please  remember  how  it  is : 
He's  come  to  help  you  ditch  the  meadow. 
He  has  a  plan.     You  mustn't  laugh  at  him. 
He  may  not  speak  of  it,  and  then  he  may. 
I'll  sit  and  see  if  that  small  sailing  cloud 
Will  hit  or  miss  the  moon." 

It  hit  the  moon. 

Then  there  were  three  there  making  a  dim  row, 
The  moon,  the  little  silver  cloud,  and  she. 
Warren  returned — too  soon,  it  seemed  to  her. 
Slipped  to  her  side,  caught  up  her  hand  and  waited. 

"Warren,"   she   questioned. 

"Dead,"  was  all  he  answered. 
[227] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

Yes,  this  is  poetry,  but  of  what  order  ^  the  peo- 
ple may  question,  to  whom  for  some  reason  poetry 
connotes  the  fervour  of  lyrical  passion,  the  glow 
of  romantic  colour,  or  the  play  of  picturesque 
fancy.  But  it  is  precisely  its  quiet  passion  and 
spiritual  tenderness  that  betray  this  to  be  poetry 
of  a  rare  order,  "the  poetry  of  a  true  real  natural 
vision  of  life,"  which,  as  Goethe  declared,  "de- 
mands descriptive  power  of  the  highest  degree, 
rendering  a  poet's  pictures  so  life-like  that  they 
become  actualities  to  every  reader."  One  may 
indeed  anticipate  that  the  "honourable  minority" 
will  appraise  highly  the  spiritual  beauty  of  the 
lines  above  quoted. 

But  what  of  his  unconventional  ge?ire  pictures, 
such  as  "A  Hundred  Collars'"?  Is  it  necessary  to 
carry  the  war  against  the  enemy's  cardboard  for- 
tresses of  convention  by  using  Goethe's  further 
declaration : — 

"At  bottom  no  subject  is  unpoetical,  if  only  the 
poet  knows  how  to  treat  it  aright."  The  dictum 
is  explicit:  "A  true,  real,  natural  vision  of 
life  .  .  .  high  descriptive  power  .  .  .  pictures  of 
lifelike  actuality  ...  a  lively  feeling  of  situa- 
tion"— if  a  poet  possess  these  qualifications  he 
may  treat  any  theme  or  situation  he  pleases.  In- 
deed,  the  more  prosaic  appears   the  vesture  of 

[228] 


ROBERT   FROST 

everyday  life,  the  greater  is  the  poet's  triumph  in 
seizing  and  representing  the  enduring  human  in- 
terest of  its  familiar  features.  In  the  characteris- 
tic fact,  form,  or  feature  the  poet  no  less  than  the 
artist  will  discover  essential  lines  and  aspects  of 
beauty.  Nothing  is  barred  to  him,  if  he  only 
have  vision.  Even  the  most  eccentric  divagations 
in  human  conduct  can  be  exhibited  in  their  true 
spiritual  perspective  by  the  psychologist  of  in- 
sight, as  Browning  repeatedly  demonstrates.  One 
sees  no  reason  why  Browning's  "Fra  Lippo  Lippi" 
with  all  its  roughcast,  philosophic  speculation 
should  be  "-poetry"  and  Mr.  Frost's  "A  Hundred 
Collars,"  should  not;  and  indeed  the  purist  must 
keep  the  gate  closed  on  both  or  on  neither.  If  I 
desired  indeed  to  know  whether  a  reader  could 
really  detect  the  genuine  poet,  when  he  appears 
amid  the  crowd  of  dilettanti^  I  should  ask  his 
judgment  on  a  typical  uncompromising  passage  in 
"A  Hundred  Collars,"  such  as  the  following: — 


^fc-' 


"No  room,"  the  night  clerk  said,  "Unless — " 
Woodville's  a  place  of  shrieks  and  wandering  lamps 
And  cars  that  shook  and  rattle — and  one  hotel. 

"You  say  'unless.'  " 

"Unless  you  wouldn't  mind 
Sharing  a  room  with  someone  else." 

[229] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

"Who  is  it?" 

"A  man." 

"So  I  should  hope.     What  kind  of  man?" 

"I  know  him :  he's  all  right.     A  man's  a  man. 

Separate  beds  of  course  you  understand." 

The  night  clerk  blinked  his  eyes  and  dared  him  on. 

"Who's  that  man  sleeping  in  the  office  chair? 
Has  he  had  the  refusal  of  my  chance?" 

"He  was  afraid  of  being  robbed  or  murdered. 
What  do  you  say?" 

"I'll  have  to  have  a  bed." 

The  night  clerk  led  him  up  three  flights  of  stairs 
And  down  a  narrow  passage  full  of  doors, 
At  the  last  one  of  which  he  knocked  and  entered. 
"Lafe,  here's  a  fellow  wants  to  share  your  room." 

"Show  him  this  way.     I'm  not  afraid  of  him. 
I'm  not  so  drunk  I  can't  take  care  of  myself." 

The  night  clerk  clapped  a  bedstead  on  the  foot. 
"This  will  be  yours.     Good  night,"  he  said,  and 

went. 
The  doctor  looked  at  Lafe  and  looked  away. 
A  man?     A  brute.     Naked  above  the  waist, 
He  sat  there  creased  and  shining  in  the  light, 

[230] 


ROBERT    FROST 

Fumbling  the  buttons  in  a  well-starched  shirt. 

"I'm  moving  into  a  size-larger  shirt. 

Fve  felt  mean  lately ;  mean's  no  name  for  it. 

Fve  found  just  what  the  matter  was  to-night: 

Fve  been  a-choking  like  a  nursery  tree 

When  it  outgrows  the  wire  band  of  its  name-tag. 

I  blamed  it  on  the  hot  spell  we've  been  having. 

'Twas  nothing  but  my  foolish  hanging  back, 

Not  liking  to  own  up  Fd  grown  a  size. 

Number  eighteen  this  is.     What  size  do  you  wear*?" 

The   Doctor   caught  his   throat   convulsively. 
"Oh — ah — fourteen — fourteen." 

The  whole  colloquy  between  this  tipsy  provin- 
cial reporter,  Lafayette,  and  the  scared  doctor, 
will,  at  the  first  blush,  seem  to  be  out  of  court 
to  the  ordinary  citizen  trained  from  childhood  to 
recognize  as  "poetical,"  say,  Bryant's  "Thana- 
topsis."  The  latter  is  a  good  example  of  "the 
noble  manner,"  but  the  reader  who  enjoys  it  does 
not  therefore  turn  away  with  a  puzzled  frown 
from  Holmes's  "The  Wonderful  One-hoss  Shay." 

But  is  Mr.  Frost  then  a  humorist*?  the  reader 
may  inquire,  seeing  a  gleam  of  light.  Humour 
has  its  place  in  his  work;  that  is  to  say,  our  au- 
thor's moods  take  their  rise  from  his  contemplative 
scrutiny  of  character  in  men  and  nature,  and  he  re- 
sponds equally  to  a  tragic  episode  or  a  humorous 

[231] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

situation.  But,  like  creators  greater  in  achieve- 
ment, his  humorous  perception  is  interwoven  with 
many  other  strands  of  apprehension,  and  in  his 
genre  pictures,  sympathy  blends  with  ironical  ap- 
preciation of  grave  issues,  to  endow  them  with 
unique  temperamental  flavour.  If  one  styled 
"Mending  Wall"  and  "A  Hundred  Collars"  idyls 
of  New  England  life,  the  reader  might  remark 
sarcastically  that  they  do  not  seem  very  idyllic; 
but  idyls  they  are  none  the  less,  not  in  the  corrup- 
ted sense  of  pseudo-Arcadian  pastorals,  but  in  the 
original  meaning  of  "little  pictures."  One  may 
contend  that  "The  Housekeeper"  is  cast  in  much 
the  same  gossiping  style  as  Theocritus's  idyl, 
"The  Ladies  of  Syracuse,"  with  its  prattle  of  pro- 
vincial ladies  over  their  household  affairs  and  the 
crush  in  the  Alexandrian  streets  at  the  Festival  of 
Adonis.  And  one  may  wager  that  this  famous 
poem  shocked  the  academic  taste  of  the  day  by 
its  unconventional ity,  and  would  not  indeed, 
please  modern  professors,  were  it  not  the  work  of 
a  Greek  poet  who  lived  three  hundred  years  be- 
foie  Christ. 

It  IS  not  indeed  a  bad  precept  for  readers  who 
wish  to  savour  the  distinctive  quality  of  new  origi- 
nal talents  to  judge  them  first  by  the  human  inter- 
est of  what  they  present.     Were  this  simple  plan 
[232] 


ROBERT    FROST 

followed,  a  Browning  or  a  Whitman  would  not 
be  k'^pt  waiting  so  long  in  the  chilling  shadow  of 
contemporary  disapproval.  Regard  simply  the 
people  in  Mr.  Frost's  dramatic  dialogues,  their 
motives  and  feelings,  their  intercourse  and  the 
clash  of  their  outlooks,  and  note  how  these  little 
canvases,  painted  with  quiet,  deep  understanding 
of  life's  incongruous  everyday  web,  begin  to  glow 
with  subtle  colour.  Observe  how  the  author  in 
"A  Servant  to  Servants,"  picturing  the  native  or 
local  surroundings,  makes  the  essentials  live  and 
speak  in  a  woman's  homely  confession  of  her  fear 
of  madness. 

But  it  is  best  to  give  an  example  of  Mr.  Frost's 
emotional  force,  and  in  quoting  a  passage  from 
"Home  Burial,"  I  say  unhesitatingly  that  for 
tragic  poignancy  this  piece  stands  by  itself  in 
American  poetry.  How  dramatic  is  the  action, 
in  this  moment  of  revelation  of  the  tragic  rift 
sundering  man  and  wife  I 

He  saw  her  from  the  bottom  of  the  stairs 
Before  she  saw  him.     She  was  starting  down, 
Looking  back  over  her  shoulder  at  some  fear. 
She  took  a  doubtful  step  and  then  undid  it 
To  raise  herself  and  look  again.     He  spoke, 
Advancing  toward  her :  "What  is  it  you  see 
From  up  there  always — for  I  want  to  know." 

[233] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

She  turned  and  sank  upon  her  skirts  at  that, 

And  her  face  changed  from  terrified  to  dull, 

He  said  to  gain  time :  "What  is  it  you  see," 

Mounting  until  she  cowered  under  him. 

"I  will  find  out  now — you  must  tell  me,  dear." 

She,  in  her  place,  refused  him  any  help 

With  the  least  stiffening  of  her  neck  and  silence. 

She  let  him  look,  sure  that  he  wouldn't  see. 

Blind  creature ;  and  a  while  he  didn't  see. 

But  at  last  he  murmured,  "Oh,"  and  again,  "Oh." 

"What  is  it — what?"  she  said. 

"Just  that  I  see." 

"You  don't,"  she  challenged.     "Tell  me  what  it  is." 

"The  wonder  is  I  didn't  see  at  once. 

I  never  noticed  it  from  here  before. 

I  must  be  wonted  to  it — that's  the  reason. 

The  little  graveyard  where  my  people  are ! 

So  small  the  window  frames  the  whole  of  it. 

Not  so  much  larger  than  a  bedroom,  is  it? 

There  are  three  stones  of  slate  and  one  of  marble, 

Broad-shouldered  little  slabs  there  in  the  sunlight. 

On  the  sidehill.     We  haven't  to  mind  those. 

But  I  understand :  it  is  not  the  stones. 

But  the  child's  mound — " 

"Don't,  don't,  don't  don't,"  she  cried. 

He  entreats  his  wife  to  let  him  into  her  grief, 


[2341 


ROBERT    FROST 

and  not  to  carry  it,  this  time,  to  some  one  else. 
He  entreats  her  to  tell  him  why  the  loss  of  her 
first  child  has  bred  in  her  such  rankling  bitterness 
toward  him,  and  why  every  word  of  his  about  the 
dead  child  gives  her  such  offence. 

— "And  it  comes  to  this, 
A  man  can't  speak  of  his  own  child  that's  dead." 

"You  can't  because  you  don't  know  how. 

If  you  had  any  feelings,  you  that  dug 

With  your  own  hand — how  could  you? — his  little 

grave ; 
I  saw  you  from  that  very  window  there. 
Making  the  gravel  leap  and  leap  in  air. 
Leap  up  like  that,  like  that,  and  land  so  lightly 
And  roll  back  down  the  mound  beside  the  hole. 
I  thought,  Who  is  that  man"?     I  didn't  know  you. 
And  I  crept  down  the  stairs  and  up  the  stairs 
To  look  again,  and  still  your  spade  kept  lifting. 
Then  you  came  in.     I  heard  your  rumbling  voice 
Out  in  the  kitchen,  and  I  don't  know  why. 
But  I  went  near  to  see  with  my  own  eyes. 
You  could  sit  there  with  the  stains  on  your  shoes 
Of  the  fresh  earth  from  your  baby's  grave 
And  talk  about  your  everyday  concerns. 
You  had  stood  the  spade  up  against  the  wall 
Outside  there  in  the  entry,  for  I  saw  it." 

"I  shall  laugh  the  worst  laugh  I  ever  laughed. 
I'm  cursed,  God,  if  I  don't  believe  I'm  cursed." 

[235] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

"I  can  repeat  the  very  words  you  were  saying. 
'Three  foggy  mornings  and  one  rainy  day 
Will  rot  the  best  birch  fence  a  man  can  build.' 

Think  of  it,  talk  like  that  at  such  a  time ! 

What  had  how  long  it  takes  a  birch  to  rot 

To  do  with  what  was  in  the  darkened  parlor. 

You   couldn't   care!     The   nearest   friends   can   go 

With  any  one  to  death,  comes  so  far  short 

They  might  as  well  not  try  to  go  at  all. 

No,  from  the  time  when  one  is  sick  to  death, 

One  is  alone,  and  he  dies  more  alone. 

Friends   make  pretence   of  following  to  the  grave, 

But  before  one  is  in  it,  their  minds  are  turned 

And  making  the  best  of  their  way  back  to  life 

And  living  people,  and  things  they  understand. 

But  the  world's  evil.     I  won't  have  grief  so 

If  I  can  change  it.     Oh,  I  won't,  I  won't." 

Here  is  vision,  bearing  the  flame  of  piercing 
feeling  in  the  living  word.  How  exquisitely  the 
strain  of  the  mother's  anguish  is  felt  in  that  naked 
image, — 

Making  the  gravel  leap  and  leap  in  the  air. 
Leap  up  like  that,  like  that,  and  land  so  lightly. 

Perhaps  some  readers,  deceived  by  the  supreme 
simplicity  of  this  passage,  may  not  see  what  art 
has  inspired  its  perfect  naturalness.  It  is  indeed 
the  perfection  of  poetic  realism,  both  in  observa- 

[236] 


ROBERT    FROST 

tion  and  in  deep  insight  into  the  heart.  How 
well  most  of  us  know,  after  we  have  followed  some 
funeral  and  stood  by  the  grave-side  of  some  man 
near  to  us,  that  baffled,  uneasy  self-questioning, 
"Why  do  I  feel  so  little?  Is  it  possible  I  have  no 
more  sorrow  or  regret  to  feel  at  his  death*?"  But 
what  other  poet  has  said  this  with  such  moving, 
felicity? 

I  have  quoted  "Home  Burial"  partly  from  the 
belief  that  its  dramatic  intensity  will  best  level 
any  popular  barrier  to  the  recognition  of  its  au- 
thor's creative  originality.  But  one  does  not  ex- 
pect that  even  a  sensitive  taste  will  respond  so 
readily  to  the  rare  flavour  of  "The  Mountain"  as 
did  the  American  people  to  Whittier's  "Snow- 
bound," fifty  years  back.  The  imagery  of  the 
Quaker  poet's  idyl,  perfectly  suited  to  its  purpose 
of  mirroring  with  faithful  sincerity  the  wintry 
landscape  and  the  pursuits  and  character  of  a  New 
England  farmer's  family,  is  marked  by  no  peculiar 
delicacy  or  originality  of  style.  Mr.  Frost,  on  the 
other  hand,  may  disappoint  readers  who  prefer 
grandeur  and  breadth  of  outline  or  magical  depth 
of  colouring  to  delicate  atmospheric  imagery. 

But  the  attentive  reader  will  soon  discover 
that  Mr.  Frost's  cunning  impressionism  produces 
a  subtle  cumulative  effect,  and  that  by  his  use  of 

[237] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

pauses,  digressions,  and  the  crafty  envisagement 
of  his  subject  at  fresh  angles,  he  secures  a  pervad- 
ing feeHng  of  the  mass  and  movement  and  elusive 
force  of  nature.  He  is  a  master  of  his  exacting 
medium  blank  verse, — a  new  master.  The  reader 
must  pause  and  pause  again  before  he  can  judge 
him,  so  unobtrusive  and  quiet  are  these  "effects," 
so  subtle  the  appeal  of  the  whole.  One  can,  in- 
deed, return  to  his  poems  again  and  again  without 
exhausting  their  quiet  imaginative  spell.  For  in- 
stance, the  reader  will  note  how  the  feeling  of  the 
mountain's  mighty  bulk  and  hanging  mass,  its  vast 
elbowing  flanks,  its  watching  domination  of  the 
near  fields  and  scattered  farmsteads,  begins  to 
grow  upon  him,  till  he  too  is  possessed  by  the  idea 
of  exploring  its  high  ravines,  its  fountain  springs 
and  granite  terraces.  One  of  the  surest  tests  of 
fine  art  is  whether  our  imagination  harks  back  to 
it,  fascinated  in  after  contemplation,  or  whether 
our  interest  is  suddenly  exhausted  both  in  it  and 
the  subject.  And  "The  Mountain"  shows  that  the 
poet  has  known  how  to  seize  and  present  the  mys- 
terious force  and  essence  of  living  nature. 

In  nearly  all  Mr.  Frost's  quiet  dramatic  dialo- 
gues, his  record  of  the  present  passing  scene  sug- 
gests how  much  has  gone  before,  how  much  these 
people  have  lived  through,  what  a  lengthy  chain 

[238] 


ROBERT    FROST 

of  feelings  and  motives  and  circumstances  has 
shaped  their  actions  and  mental  attitudes.  Thus 
in  "The  Housekeeper,"  his  picture  of  the  stout  old 
woman  sitting  there  in  her  chair,  talking  over 
Estelle,  her  grown-up  daughter,  who,  weary  of 
her  anomalous  position  in  the  household,  has  left 
John  and  gone  off  and  married  another  man,  car- 
ries with  it  a  rich  sensation  of  the  women's  sharp 
criticism  of  a  procrastinating  obstinate  man.  John 
is  too  dense  in  his  masculine  way  to  know  how 
much  he  owes  to  them.  This  psychological  sketch 
in  its  sharp  actuality  is  worthy  of  Sarah  Orne 
Jewett. 

But  why  put  it  in  poetry  and  not  in  prose*?  the 
reader  may  hazard.  Well,  it  comes  with  greater 
intensity  in  rhythm  and  is  more  heightened  and 
concentrated  in  effect  thereby.  If  the  reader  will 
examine  "A  Servants  to  Servants,"  he  will  recog- 
nize that  this  narrative  of  a  woman's  haunting  fear 
that  she  has  inherited  the  streak  of  madness  in 
her  family,  would  lose  in  distinction  and  clarity 
were  it  told  in  prose.  Yet  so  extraordinarily  close 
to  normal  everyday  speech  is  it  that  I  anticipate 
some  academic  person  may  test  its  metre  with  a 
metronome,  and  declare  that  the  verse  is  often 
awkward  in  its  scansion.  No  doubt.  But  so, 
also,  is  the  blank  verse  of  many  a  master  hard  to 

[239] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

scan,  if  the  academic  footrule  be  not  applied  with 
a  nice  comprehension  of  where  to  give  and  when 
to  take.  In  "A  Servant  to  Servants"  the  tragic 
effect  of  this  overdriven  woman's  unburdening 
herself  of  her  load  of  painful  memories  and 
gloomy  forebodings  is  to  my  mind  a  rare  artistic 
achievement, — one  that  graves  itself  on  the 
memory. 

And  now  that  we  have  praised  "North  of  Bos- 
ton" so  freely,  shall  we  not  make  certain  stiff  crit- 
ical reservations  ?  Doubtless  one  would  do  so  were 
one  not  conscious  that  Mr.  Frost's  fellow  poets, 
his  deserving  rivals,  will  relieve  one  of  the  task. 
May  I  say  to  them  here  that  because  I  believe  Mr. 
Frost  in  "North  of  Boston"  has  found  a  way  for 
himself,  so  I  believe  their  road  lies  also  open  before 
them.  There  roads  are  infinite,  and  will  surely 
yield,  now  or  tomorrow,  vital  discoveries.  A 
slight  defect  of  Mr.  Frost's  subtle  realistic  method, 
and  one  does  not  wish  to  slur  it  over,  is  that  it  is 
sometimes  diflRcult  to  grasp  all  the  implications 
and  bearings  of  his  situations.  His  language  in 
"The  Self-seeker"  is  highly  figurative,  too  figura- 
tive perhaps  for  poetry.  Again  in  "The  Genera- 
tions of  Man,"  as  in  some  of  this  extract  we  have 
given,  his  method  as  art  seems  to  be  a  little  long- 
winded.  In  many  of  his  poems,  his  fineness  of 
[240] 


ROBERT   FROST 

psychological  truth  is  perhaps  in  excess  of  his 
poetic  beauty, — an  inevitable  defect  of  his  cool, 
fearless  realism,.  And  the  critical  corollary  no 
doubt  will  be  made,  that  from  the  intensity  with 
which  he  makes  us  realize  things  we  should  gain 
a  little  more  pleasure?  But  here  one  may  add 
that  there  is  pleasure  and  pleasure,  and  that  it 
seems  remarkable  that  this  New  England  poet, 
so  absorbed  by  the  psychological  drama  of  peo- 
ple's temperaments  and  conduct,  should  preserve 
such  pure  outlines  and  clear  objectivity  of  style. 
Is  his  talent  a  pure  product  of  New  England 
soil?  I  take  it  that  just  as  Hawthorne  owed  a 
debt  to  English  influence,  so  Mr.  Frost  owes  one 
also.  But  his  "native  touch"  is  declared  by  the 
subtle  blend  of  outspokenness  and  reticence,  of 
brooding  conscience  and  grave  humour.  Speaking 
under  correction,  it  appears  to  me  that  his  creative 
vision,  springing  from  New  England  soil,  and 
calmly  handing  on  the  best  and  oldest  American 
tradition,  may  be  a  little  at  variance  with  the  cos- 
mopolitan clamour  of  New  York.  It  would  be 
quaint  indeed  if  Americans  who,  according  to  their 
magazines,  are  opening  their  hospitable  bosoms  to 
Mr.  Rabindranath  Tagore's  spiritual  poems  and 
dramas  of  Bengal  life,  should  rest  oblivious  of 
their  own  countryman.     To  certain  citizens  Mr. 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

Frost's  poems  of  the  life  of  inconspicuous,  humble 
New  England  folk  may  seem  unattractively 
homely  in  comparison  with  the  Eastern  poet's 
lofty,  mystical  dramas;  but  by  American  crit- 
ics this  view  will  doubtless  be  characterized  as 
a  manifestation  of  American  provincialism.  The 
critici  know  that  a  poet  who  has  no  "message"  to 
deliver  to  the  world,  whose  work  is  not  only  bare 
of  prettiness  and  sentimentality  but  is  isolated 
and  unaffected  by  this  or  that  "movement,"  is 
easily  set  aside.  Nothing  is  easier,  since  his 
appeal  is  neither  to  the  interests  nor  caprices  of 
the  market.  Ours  indeed  is  peculiarly  the  day 
when  everything  pure,  shy,  and  independent  in 
art  seems  at  the  mercy  of  those  who  beat  the  big 
drum  and  shout  their  wares  through  the  mega- 
phone. And  knowing  this,  the  critic  of  con- 
science will  take  for  his  watchword  quality. 

"Mr.  Frost  is  a  true  poet,  but  not  a  poetical 
poet,"  remarked  a  listener  to  whom  I  read  "A  Ser- 
vant to  Servants,"  leaving  me  wondering  whether 
his  verdict  inclined  the  scales  definitely  to  praise 
or  blame.  Of  poetical  poets  we  have  so  many !  of 
literary  poets  so  many  I  of  drawing-room  poets  so 
many  I — of  academic  and  dilettanti  poets  so 
many !  of  imitative  poets  so  many !  but  of  original 
poets  how  few ! 

[242] 


SOME    REMARKS    ON    AMERICAN 
AND    ENGLISH    FICTION 


SOME  REMARKS  ON  AMERICAN  AND 
ENGLISH  FICTION 


THE  Editor  of  The  Atlantic  Monthly  having 
invited  me  to  speak  with  candour  on  the 
practice  and  prospects  of  English  and 
American  fiction,  I  feel  that  it  is  best  to  direct  my 
remarks  to  a  few  aspects  which  may  possibly  lead 
to  some  discussion  among  American  novelists 
themselves.  ' 

I  speak  here  as  an  English  reviewer  who  has 
been  interested  for  many  years  in  the  American 
attempt  to  evolve,  in  imaginative  literature,  a 
standard  of  fine  quality,  one  which  in  Mr.  W.  D. 
Howells's  phrase  "should  be  neither  shamed  nor 
vaunting,"  And  first  it  may  be  of  profit  to  inquire 
whether  the  artistic  quality  of  English  and  i\meri- 
can  fiction  is  higher  than  was  the  case  fifteen  or 
twenty  years  ago.  I  believe  that  though  the  or- 
dinary English  novel  is  a  mediocre  affair,  truly 
representative  of  our  middle-class  limitations,  our 
dull  but  honest  domesticity,  our  lack  of  wit  and 
[245] 


FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

insensitiveness  to  form,  our  dislike  of  bitter  truths, 
our  preference  for  mild  idealism  and  sentimen- 
tal solutions,  still  the  typical  English  novel  to- 
day is  less  vulgar,  less  false,  less  melodramatic  in 
its  appeal  than  it  was  a  generation  ago. 

Can  the  same  be  said  of  the  American  novels 
My  opinion  is  here  set  down  in  the  hope  of  elicit- 
ing the  views  of  other  critics.  But  it  appears  to 
me  that,  of  late,  a  certain  intensification  of  the 
commercial  ideal  in  America,  with  the  increasing 
"hunt  of  the  dollar,"  is  more  and  more  restricting 
the  field  of  exercise  of  the  finer  and  quieter  talents 
in  fiction,  and  that  the  rivalry  of  American  pub- 
lishers in  flooding  the  country  with  inferior  brands 
of  novels  must  be  tending  to  depress  the  public 
standard  of  taste.  It  must  be,  indeed,  that  there 
are  fine  and  delicate  talents  emerging  amid  the 
raging  spate  of  "best  sellers" ;  but  it  is  harder  to 
distinguish  their  gleam  amid  the  subfusk,  swollen 
cataract  of  stories  made  to  order. 

In  England,  of  course,  as  in  America,  there  are 
bottomless  depths  in  the  insatiable  appetite  of  the 
public  for  an  art  of  sensational  shocks  and  senti- 
mental twaddle,^  but  the  point  is  whether  the  mar- 

1  To  balance  the  disconcerting  fact  that  Mrs.  Florence  Bar- 
clay's twaddling  novels  hail  from  an  English  vicarage,  we 
quote   an   American   publisher's   advertisement:   "'The   Book  of 

[246] 


SOME    REMARKS 

ket  for  the  fine,  conscientious  piece  of  literary 
craftsmanship  is  a  rising  or  a  falling  one*?  Va- 
rious straws  of  tendency  in  the  United  States 
point  in  a  depressing  direction.  Twenty  years 
ago  did  not  Mr.  W.  D.  Howells's  splendid  exam- 
ple in  literature  carry  more  weight  with  the  intel- 
ligent public  than  today"?  It  will  be  rejoined, 
pei'haps,  that  there  is  no  living  novelist  of  the 
younger  American  school  who^can  paint  with  such 
subtle  flexibility  of  insight  and  such  breadth  of 
vision  the  portrait  of  his  generation,  as  did  the 
author  of  "Silas  Lapham."  If  so,  the  sign  is  not 
auspicious. 

The  fact  that  the  influence  wielded  by  two  of 
your  ablest  novelists,  Edith  Wharton  and  Anne 
Douglas  Sedgwick,  is  so  restricted  in  scope  in  pro- 
portion to  their  gift,  suggests  that  the  American 
mind  is  hostile  to  the  artist  in  literature,  whereas 
our  English  audience,  at  worst,  is  apathetic  or  in- 

Thrills,'  'Darkness  and  Dawn.'  By  George  Allan  England"; 
and   so  forth. 

"Also  you  have  a  wonderful  wooing  under  perfectly  unheard- 
of  conditions;  an  ideal  love,  pure,  tender,  unselfish.  .  .  . 
Beatrice's  abduction,  Allan's  fight  with  a  giant  gorilla,  the 
air-ship  wreck,  the  thrilling  defence  against  a  horde  of  half- 
animal  savages,  and  the  building  up  of  a  new  world  and 
a  beautiful  idealistic  civilization  on  the  ruins  of  a  blasted 
planet — these  but  suggest  the  entertainment  possibilities  of 
this   big   romance,"   and   so  on. 

[247] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

different.  With  us,  though  the  fight  against  com- 
mercial Philistinism  is  perennial,  the  writers  of 
rare  imaginative  gift  do  not  seem  to  me  so  iso- 
lated, so  hemmed  in,  and  cut  off  from  assistance  of 
cultivated  minds  as  in  America. 

II 

Let  us  look  back  along  the  line  some  twenty- 
years.  From  an  undated  cutting  from  the  Lon- 
don Speaker,  which  must  belong  to  1894,  or  1895 
at  latest,  I  find  that  I  singled  out  Mr.  Hamlin 
Garland,  Miss  Murfree,  Miss  Grace  King,  Mr. 
F.  Hopkinson  Smith,  Miss  Mary  Wilkins,  and 
Miss  Katharine  Smith  as  the  most  gifted  literary 
artists  in  the  younger,  rising  school,  Messrs.  W. 
D.  Howells's,  Henry  James's,  and  George  W. 
Cable's  reputations  having  been  of  course  long 
solidly  established. 

By  some  accident  I  did  not  come  across  Miss 
Sarah  Orne  Jewett's  incomparable  short  stories 
till  several  years  later,  when  I  recommended  an 
English  publisher  to  import  an  edition  of  "The 
Country  of  the  Pointed  Firs."  But  the  failure  of 
American  criticism  to  recognize  that,  by  virtue  of 
thirty  little  masterpieces  in  the  short  story.  Miss 
Jewett  ranks  with  the  leading  European  masters, 
and  its  grudging,   inadequate  recognition  of  the 

[248] 


SOME    REMARKS 

most  original  genius  it  has  produced  in  story-tel- 
ling, Mr.  Stephen  Crane,  showed  me  that  it  had 
not  realized  that  real  talent,  aesthetic  or  literary, 
is  individual  in  its  structure,  experience,  outlook, 
and  growth,  and  that  it  makes  its  appeal  and  sur- 
vives to  posterity  by  reason  of  its  peculiar  origin- 
ality of  tone  and  vision,  expressed  in  beauty  and 
force  of  form,  of  atmosphere,  and  of  style. 

Every  fresh  native  talent  emerges  by  virtue 
of  its  revelation  of  fresh  aspects  and  original 
points  of  view,  which  create  fresh  valuations  in 
our  comprehension  of  life  and  human  nature. 
Now  this  very  simple  test,  which  is  indeed  self- 
evident,  is  the  touchstone  by  which  we  separate  the 
genuine  metal  of  imaginative  art  from  the  sham 
or  common  alloy  of  the  popular  fabricated  article. 
If  we  apply  it  in  the  cases  of  Frank  R.  Stockton 
and  Joel  Chandler  Harris  we  perceive  that  the 
originality  of  those  delightful  humorists  entitles 
them  to  seats  not  far  removed  from  that  of  Mark 
Twain.  Again,  when  Mr.  Frank  Norris  ap- 
peared, his  "McTeague"  was  no  literary  echo,  or 
iteration  or  affirmation  of  current  social  ideas  or 
ideals,  whatever  may  have  been  the  precise  meas- 
ure of  literary  talent.  The  same  may  be  said  of 
Mr.  Harold  Frederick's  powerful  novel  "Illumina- 
tion." Later,  when  Mr.  Dreiser  came  in  sight 
[249] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

with  his  "Sister  Carrie,"  the  present  writer  had  the 
honour  of  recommending  it  for  English  publica- 
tion, while  that  admirable  piece  of  realism  was 
being  cold-shouldered  and  boycotted  for  years  by 
the  body  of  American  publishers. 

I  do  not  know  whether  the  late  O.  Henry's 
marvellous  powers  of  language,  gaiety,  creative 
fecundity,  and  imaginative  power  in  handling  a 
situation  have  yet  received  their  due  in  America, 
but  the  point  I  wish  to  make  clear  is  that  between 
the  writers  above  enumerated,  namely  between 
Miss  Sarah  Orne  Jewett,  Miss  Murfree,  Miss 
Mary  Wilkins,  Miss  Grace  King,  Mrs.  Wharton, 
Miss  Anne  Douglas  Sedgwick,  Mr.  Frank  R. 
Stockton,  Mr.  J.  C.  Harris,  Mr.  Hamlin  Garland, 
Mr.  F.  Hopkinson  Smith,  Mr.  Stephen  Crane, 
Mr.  Frank  Norris,  O.  Henry,^  and  such  clever 
popular  favourites  as  Mr.  Winston  Churchill,  Miss 
Mary  Johnston,  Mr.  Robert  W.  Chambers,  Mr. 
Richard  Harding  Davis,  Mr.  John  Fox,  Jr.,  Mr. 
Owen  Johnson,  it  would  be  waste  of  time  to 
institute  comparisons  in  respect  of  artistic  gifts 
and  originality  of  temperament.  The  work  of 
the   first   class   of   writers,   unequal   as   are   their 

1  I  omit  Miss  Katherine  Smith  and  Mr.  Dreiser,  for  I  am 
not  aware  whether  their  later  work  fulfilled  the  promise  re- 
spectively   of    "The    Cy-Barker    Ledge"    and    "Sister    Carrie." 

[^50] 


SOME    REMARKS 

achievements  in  point  of  individual  genius,  is  of 
a  grade  artistically  far  beyond  the  reach  of  the 
second  class  enumerated. 

In  saying  that  the  work  of  the  latter — repre- 
sented by  the  six  authors  I  have  cited — is  obvi- 
ously deficient  in  "temperamental  value,"  I  do 
not  mean  that  these  authors  are  indistinguishable 
one  from  another,  but  that  in  tone,  in  insight, 
in  style,  each  is  little  more  than  a  popular  sound- 
ing-board for  the  reverberation  of  current  tones 
and  moods  of  the  mass  of  minds.  Take  Mr.  R. 
H.  Davis's  story  "The  Man  who  could  not  Lose," 
Mr.  R.  W.  Chambers's  "The  Business  of  Life," 
Mr.  Owen  Johnson's  "The  Salamander,"  and 
ask  what  measure  of  creative  originality  informs 
them.  None.  None  at  all,  or  next  to  none. 
These  stories  no  doubt  may  amuse  or  interest  or 
instruct  their  audience,  but  the  hrst  is  worthless, 
the  second  mediocre,  the  third  meretricious  as 
an  artistic  achievement.  They  are  destined  for 
the  rubbish  heap,  if  indeed  they  have  not  been 
deposited  there  already.  And  the  works,  all  told, 
of  Mr.  Winston  Churchill,  Miss  Mary  Johnston, 
and  Mr.  John  Fox,  Jr.,  despite  the  amazing  energy 
and  industry  of  their  authors,  kick  the  beam 
when  weighed  against  a  single  little  masterpiece 
by  Miss  Sarah  Orne  Jewett  or  Stephen  Crane. 

[251] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

This  of  course  is  an  obvious  truth  to  any  critical 
intelligence,  but  I  do  not  know  how  far  it  is  now 
accepted  in  America. 

Ill 

At  this  point  of  the  inquiry  my  reader  may  ask, 
Do  not  you  possess  in  England  this  same  class  of 
popular  favourites  whose  novels  and  tales  are  also 
destitute  of  real  creative  originality,  aesthetic  in- 
terest, and  individual  insight?  We  do.  But 
the  work  of  industrious  talents  such  as  Sir  Gilbert 
Parker,  Mr.  A.  E.  W.  Mason,  Mr.  W.  J.  Locke, 
Mr.  H.  A.  Vachell,  "Richard  Dehan,"  Miss  E.  T. 
Fowler,  and  others,  is  not  ranked  by  any  critic 
worth  his  salt  with  that  of  writers  of  creative  orig- 
inality, as  Messrs.  Joseph  Conrad,  H.  G.  Wells, 
Rudyard  Kipling,  Thomas  Hardy,  John  Gals- 
worthy, and  Arnold  Bennett. 

I  must  admit  that  the  vast  majority  of  our  Eng- 
lish audience  is  uncritical  in  its  taste,  and  that 
many  of  our  "best  sellers"  are  also  the  most  pov- 
erty-stricken and  mediocre  in  point  of  vision,  form, 
atmosphere,  and  style.  But  the  chief  advantage 
we  possess  which  leads  to  the  fostering  of  literary 
talent,  giving  it  liberty  to  grow  and  a  certain  if 
.      [252] 


SOME    REMARKS 

small  measure  of  favouring  recognition,  springs,  I 
believe,  from  the  fact  that  the  Englishman  is  so 
individual  in  his  instincts  that  the  unorthodox 
novelist  of  real  talent  will  always  find  some  backer 
to  publish  and  support  him,  and  reviewers  to 
criticize  him  with  insight  and  fairness,  ivithout 
deferring  to  the  opinion  of  the  majority.  How- 
ever dull  or  mediocre  an  ordinary  English  novel- 
ist may  be,  I  do  not  think  that  he  deliberately 
echoes  the  orthodox  shibboleths,  moral  or  social, 
of  the  public  at  large,  or  that  he  makes  a  fetish 
of  "recognized  opinion."  I  cannot  help  connecting 
the  strange  timidity  (I  had  almost  written  coward- 
ice) of  the  American  publishers  in  backing  work 
of  original  individuality  with  the  great  supersti- 
tion of  the  good  American  in  his  present  stage 
of  culture,  namely,  that  he  ought  to  be  thinking 
and  feeling  and  reiterating  what  he  imagines 
everybody  round  him  is  thinking  and  feeling  and 
reiterating.  Everybody  is  busy  copying  every- 
body else  I — an  absurd  state  of  things  which  is  not 
only  destructive  of  true  individuality,  but  directly 
inimical  to  the  creation  of  fine  art. 

The  dogma  persistently  put  forward  in  America 
under  innumerable  guises,  that  the  thinker  and 
the  literary  artist  must  cater  for  the  tastes,  ideas, 

[253] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

and  sentiments,  moral  and  emotional,  of  the  great 
majority  under  pain  of  being  ignored  ^  or  ostra- 
cized, was  noted  by  De  Tocqueville  three 
generations  ago;  but  this  dogma  bred  in  the 
American  bone  seems  to  have  been  reinforced 
by  the  latter-day  tyranny  of  the  commercial 
ideal.  The  commercial  man  who  says,  "Read 
this  book  because  it  is  the  best  seller,"  is  seeking 
to  hypnotize  the  individual's  judgment  and 
taste.  If  there  be  a  noticeable  dearth  of  original- 
ity of  feeling  and  outlook  in  latter-day  Ameri- 
can fiction,  it  must  be  because  the  individual  is 
subjected  from  the  start  to  the  insistent  pressure 
of  social  ideals  of  conformity  which  paralyze  or 
crush  out  the  finer,  rarer,  more  sensitive  individ- 
ual talents,  I  do  not  say  that  English  writers 
are  not  vexed  in  a  minor  degree  by  Mrs.  Grun- 
dy's attempts  to  boycott  or  crush  novels  that  of- 
fend the  taste  of  "the  villa  public,"  but  I  believe 
that  our  social  atmosphere  favours  the  writer  of 
true  individuality;  and  in  proof  of  this  state- 
ment I  set  down  here  a  list  of  over  sixty  novelists 
of  genuine  original  talent,  many  of  whom  are 
literary  craftsmen  of  high  artistic  quality;  and 

1  'One  is  told,  for  example  of  the  fate  of  the  late  Frank 
Norris's  rejected  posthumous  novel.  "Vandover,"  was  not  in  ac- 
cord with  the  spirit  of  the  day  in  literature,  and  in  the  time  of 
rapid  production  it  was  easy  to  ignore  its  claim. — 

[254] 


SOME    REMARKS 

these  are  in  addition  to  the  six  I  have  already- 
named  : — 

George  Moore,  Hilaire  Belloc,  Cunninghame 
Graham,  W.  H.  Hudson,  D.  H.  Lawrence,  E.  M. 
Foster,  William  De  Morgan,  Leonard  Merrick, 
Maurice  Hewlett,  John  Maseheld,  Sir  A.  Quiller- 
Couch,  Robert  Hichens,  Stephen  Reynolds,  A.  F. 
Wedgwood,  David  W.  Bone,  Barry  Pain,  C.  E. 
Montague,  Oliver  Onions,  J.  C.  Snaith,  James 
Stephens,  Frank  Harris,  Neil  Lyons,  Perceval 
Gibbon,  Walter  De  La  Mare,  Charles  Marriott, 
I  ord  Hueffer,  H.  De  Vere  Stacpoole,  Neil  Munro, 
Morley "Roberts,  Vincent  O'SuUivan,  Marmaduke 
Pickthall,  Compton  Mackenzie,  J.  D.  Beresford, 
E.  V.  Lucas,  Frank  Swinnerton,  W.  L.  George, 
Edwin  Pugh,  Gilbert  Cannan,  Archibald  Mar- 
v^hall.  Grant  Richards,  Algernon  Blackwood, 
Gerald  O'Donovan,  Shan  Bullock,  Eden  Phill- 
potts,  George  Birmingham,  Richard  Pryce,  Sir 
Conan  Doyle,  James  Prior,  Mrs.  Mary  E.  Mann, 
Miss  May  Sinclair,  Miss  Ethel  Sidgwick,  Mrs. 
Steel,  Mrs.  Dudeney,  Mrs.  Gertrude  Bone,  Miss 
Macnaughtan,  Miss  Violet  Hunt,  Mrs.  Ada  Lever- 
son,  Mrs.  C.  Dawson  Scott,  Miss  Amber  Reeves, 
Miss  Silberrad,  and  Mrs.   Margaret  Woods. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  know  how  far  the 
above   list — ^which   could   be   extended — can   be 

[255] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

paralleled  by  a  similiar  list  of  living  American 
novelists  of  artistic  rank.  I  have  counted  up  to 
twenty  myself,  in  addition  to  those  already  cited; 
but  I  cannot  claim  to  have  explored  or  examined 
thoroughly  the  field  of  American  fiction  for  several 
years  past,  and  I  must  remind  my  readers  that  in 
touching  on  certain  aspects  in  the  outlook  for  fic- 
tion I  am  hoping  to  elicit  information  and  dis- 
cussion. 

Now  it  may  perhaps  help  the  inquiry  if  I  quote 
some  passages  from  a  criticism  of  Mr  Jack  Lon- 
don's "Burning  Daylight,"  a  criticism  styled 
Made  in  America,"  which  I  contributed  to  a  Lon- 
don newspaper  three  years  back : — 

"Why  is  it  that  the  work  of  so  many  highly 
intelligent  American  novelists  is  so  deficient  in 
artistic  quality  when  we  come  to  compare  it  with 
European  fiction  an  the  same  intellectual  level  *? 
Writers  of  genius  America  can  of  course  show 
us  .  .  .  but  I  am  speaking  with  reference  to 
scores  of  the  clever  popular  novelists  whose  artis- 
tic instincts  seem  to  be  affected,  indeed  largely 
stultified,  by  an  insidious  force,  omnipresent  in 
the  American  social  atmosphere,  which  dictates 
such  absurd  observances  las  "the  happy  ending." 
While  nearly  every  society  wishes  its  governing 
ideas  to  be  paramount,  and  is  distrustful  of  the 

[256] 


SOME   REMARKS 

artist  who  subjects  them  to  an  unfaltering  analy- 
sis, it  is  only  in  America  that  the  commercial  in- 
stinct seems  to  have  succeeded  in  erecting  the 
mediocrity  of  the  ordinary  man,  in  matters  artis- 
tic, into  an  imperative  standard  of  tasteless- 
ness.  .  .  . 

"Now,  in  modern  art  what  matters  perhaps  most 
is  the  temperament  of  the  artist,  that  individual 
essence  which  creates  a  new  spiritual  quality  and 
atmosphere  out  of  the  life  and  forms  and  patterns 
of  society.  .  .  .  An  essential  in  creative  art  is 
the  artist's  temperamental  absorption  in  his  own 
work.  Art  in  that  respect  is  essentially  aristo- 
cratic, however  democratic  its  appeal  may  be. 
That  is  what  Meredith  meant  when  he  said,  'Do 
not  democratize  literature.'  Beer  or  blankets  or 
biscuits  or  braces  may  be  manufactured  to  please 
the  taste  of  the  average  man,  but  art  cannot  be  so 
dealt  with  under  penalty  of  losing  its  quality  as 
art.  The  business  people  do  not,  of  course,  under- 
stand this.  They  cry  aloud  for  novels  that  sell  in 
hundreds  of  thousands, — those  novels  which  are 
'graded,'  cleverly  or  not,  to  a  standard  of  medio- 
cre taste.  And  temperamental  quality,  being  un- 
adaptable and  self- regarding,  is  a{)t  to  be  a  stum- 
bling-block in  the  way  of  those  popular  achieve- 
ments.    Americans,  however  channing  and  intel- 

[257] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

ligent  they  may  be,  always  seem  nervously  anxious 
to  appear  orthodox  in  their  artistic  tastes  and  ap- 
preciations. And  this  of  course  means  keeping  to 
the  high  road  of  mediocrity,  for  genuine  taste  im- 
plies again  the  expression  of  an  individual  tem- 
perament. .  .  . 

"Mr.  Jack  London's  'Burning  Daylight'  has 
more  individuality  than  most  American  novels — 
as  a  work  of  picturesque  information  on  Yukon 
pioneering,  and  as  a  smashing  criticism  of  Ameri- 
can business  ideals,  it  is  indeed  quite  valuable. 
The  story  is  a  'live'  book,  as  his  countrymen  say, 
broad  in  outlook,  manly  in  its  standpoint,  and 
one  written  with  literary  skill  and  conviction. 
Yet  this  same  curious  absence  of  temperament  is 
to  be  remarked,  and  the  novel  has  something  of 
the  eifect  of  a  composite  photograph.  Mr.  Jack 
London  does  not  echo  other  writers,  or  conform  to 
the  opinion  of  the  majority,  so  his  case  is  worth 
investigating.  The  hero,  Harnish,  is  an  American 
superman.  His  physical  feats  are  almost  superhu- 
man. He  out-runs,  out-walks,  out-distances,  out- 
drinks,  out-gambles,  out-fights,  and  so  forth,  every 
other  man  in  the  Yukon  territory,  including  the 
Indian  Kama,  'the  pick  of  his  barbaric  race.' 

"And  the  consequence  is  that  one  does  not  be- 
lieve in  Harnish  as  one  believes,  say,  in  the  exis- 

[258] 


SOME    REMARKS 

tence  of  the  heroes  of  the  Icelandic  Sagas.  He  is 
a  monster,  noC  a  man.  The  American  tendency 
to  exaggeration  has  in  fact  annihilated  all  the 
finer  lines  and  traits  of  human  personality.  And, 
after  all  art  is  a  matter  of  precise  shades  and  par- 
ticular lines.  So  with  Dede  Mason,  the  heroine 
of  the  tale,  Harnish's  'ninety-dollar-a-month  ste- 
nographer,' who  refuses  to  marry  him  when  he  is  a 
millionaire  because  she  dislikes  the  fevered  life 
he  is  leading.  Dede  Mason  is  generalized,  not 
individualized.  She  talks  not  like  any  girl  in 
particular,  but  like  a  syndicate  of  American 
women  as  reported  by  a  news  agency.  Harnish's 
courtship  and  Dede's  replies  give  one  the  sensation 
of  love-making  by  human  machinery,  very  smooth- 
running  and  effective  in  working,  but  without  in- 
dividual power  or  charm  or  flavour.  .  .  .  May  we 
not  draw  the  conclusion  that  it  is  the  pressure  of 
'standardized'  ideas  in  the  mental  interchange  of 
American  society  that  is  so  destructive  of  the  finer 
shades  of  'temperamental'  valuation'?" 

I  quote  the  above  criticism  the  more  readily 
since  it  lays  stress  on  the  two  characteristics  of 
popular  latter-day  American  fiction  which  are  des- 
tructive of  its  appeal  to  rank  as  fine  art:  that  is, 
(a)  exaggeration,  (b)  the  presentation  and  glori- 
fication of  "standardized"  morals,  manners,  emo- 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

tions,  and  stereotyped  social  ambitions  and  ethical 
valuations. 

Let  us  take  Mr.  Owen  Johnson's  "The  Salaman- 
der" for  an  illustration  of  charge  (a).  Mr.  John- 
son has  chosen  a  promising  subject,  for  the  "sala- 
mander" girl,  Dore,  is  a  significant  product  of  her 
feverish  and  artificial  New  York  environment. 
But  the  author  exhausts  us  with  a  surfeit  of 
flimsy  and  violent  sensationalism,  he  plays  with 
the  loud  pedal  down,  and  is  continually  throwing 
in  all  kinds  of  flashy  effects.  He  commences 
with  exaggerated  emphasis,  and  after  the  first 
seventy  pages  he  can  only  offer  us  a  repetition  of 
the  old  shocks.  The  men  characters — Massingale, 
Lindaberry,  Sassoon,  and  Harrigan  Blood — are 
merely  coarsely  modeled  types,  not  individual 
men  in  any  sense  of  the  word.  The  girl  characters 
are  little  better.  We  soon  sicken  of  the  erotic 
sentimentalities  that  Massingale  and  Dore  ex- 
change, and  all  the  latter  scenes  between  them  are 
vamped  up  shockingly  and  surcharged  with  false 
rhetoric  and  theatrical  over-emphasis. 

The  above  criticism  of  "The  Salamander"  may 
seem  a  little  harsh,  but  I  make  it  deliberately,  on 
the  ground  that  it  would  be  absurd  to  style  the 
novel  "a  work  of  art."    If  we  compare  it,  say,  with 

[260] 


SOME   REMARKS 

Mr.  W.  D.  Howells's  recent  novel,  "New  Leaf 
Mills,"  with  its  classic  balance,  exquisite  restraint, 
and  gracious  clarity  of  vision,  we  shall  refuse  to 
dignify  "The  Salamander"  with  the  name  of 
"literature."  The  fact  that  it  sells  one  hundred 
thousand  copies  or  a  quarter  of  a  million  copies,  or 
a  million  copies,  is  no  mitigation  of  the  fact  that 
"The  Salamander"  violates  almost  every  canon  of 
good  art.  It  may  be  added  that  a  vital  reason  for 
the  discouragement  of  crude,  violent,  and  noisy 
art  is  that  an  audience  which  is  habituated  to  be- 
ing "thrilled"  will  require  coarser  and  coarser  stim- 
ulants to  excite  its  jaded  mental  palate.  Sensa- 
tional art  is  art  in  which  everybody  seems  to  be 
talking  at  the  top  of  his  voice  to  attract  atten- 
tion, till  at  last  the  hubbub  becomes  so  deafen- 
ing that  the  people  still  resolved  on  being  heard 
begin  to  howl  and  scream.  So  it  is  with  "best  sel- 
lers" that  are  "all  outside  and  no  inside,"  and  with 
"the  New  Fiction  that  People  are  Reading" ;  the 
publishers  and  the  authors  seem  to  be  conspiring 
to  force  the  note  of  exaggeration  till  the  typical 
"best  seller"  works  with  automatic  precision  in 
producing  scenes  of  sweet  sentimental  ism  or  shock 
after  shock  of  melodramatic  incident.  If  I  am  in 
error  in  thinking  that  twenty  years  ago  the  Ameri- 
[26.] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

can  novel  of  sensation  was  a  far  soberer  and  more 
human  affair  than  it  is  today,  I  should  welcome 
evidence  on  the  point. 

IV 

As  regards  my  second  criticism,   (b),  that  the 
modern  American  novelist  seems  to  delight  in  the 
presentation  of  "standardized"  morals,  manners, 
and  emotions,  and  a  glorification  of  stereotyped 
aspirations  and  ethical  valuations,  I  may  illus- 
trate it  by  saying  that  his  unconscious  habit  seems 
to  be  to  swim  with  the  current,  to  swim  not  across 
the  stream,  but  down  it.     He  would  appear  to  be 
carried  along  by  the  force  of  the  social  stream  at 
such  a  pace  that  his  swimming,  that  is,  his  work, 
does  not  show  any  appreciable  resistance  to  the 
way  that  the  tide  of  popular  ideas  and  ideals  hap- 
pens to  be  setting.     I  except  of  course  the  work 
of  a  score  or  more  of  novelists,  such  as  Booth  Tar- 
kington,    Robert    Herrick,    Owen    Wister,    Miss 
Dewing,    and   Neith   Boyce,    whose   criticism   of 
character    is    accompanied    by    a    criticism    of 
society;  but  the  weakness  of  the  ordinary  well- 
written  American  novel  lies,  if  I  may  say  so,  in 
its     sentimental     and    ethical     conventionality. 
Even  the  novelists  who  set  out  to  create  "fresh  val- 
[262] 


SOME    REMARKS 

nations"  in  social  propaganda  seem  to  me  to  deal 
in  "stock"  sizes  of  manly  emotions.  Let  me  il- 
lustrate my  meaning  by  a  quotation  from  a  criti- 
cism, written  a  few  years  ago,  of  Mr.  Winston 
Churchill's  "Mr.  Crewe's  Career": — 

"The  naivete  of  the  author's  artistic  method  is 
shown  in  the  idyllic  contrast  that  he  draws  be- 
tween the  two  men  who  control  the  fortunes  of 
the  North-Eastern  Railroad, — Mr.  Flint,  the  Pres- 
ident, and  his  legal  adviser,  the  Hon.  Hilary 
Vane,  and  their  pure  and  upright  children,  Vic- 
toria Flint  and  Austen  Vane,  who,  of  course,  fall 
in  love  and  run  counter  to  their  parents'  crooked 
policy. 

"We  do  not  believe  in  the  candid  innocence  of 
the  fascinating  Victoria.  She  is  a  stock  tradition 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  theatre,  this  pure  and  trust- 
ing heroine  who,  lapped  in  luxury,  never  dreams 
of  questioning  her  hard  father's  methods  and  busi- 
ness code  of  ethics,  till  the  moment  comes  when, 
enlightened  by  her  lover,  she  is  'satisfied  with 
nothing  less  than  the  truth,'  and  her  'life-long 
faith'  in  him  is  broken  thereby.  We  fear  that  in 
real  life  Victoria  would  have  been  quite  prepared 
to  speculate  for  the  fall  in  North-Eastern  securi- 
ties. 

"Nor  can  we  accept   the  high-souled  Austen 

[263] 


FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

Vane  as  a  figure  representative  in  any  sense.  He 
has  the  moral  tone  of  an  Emerson,  the  brains  of  a 
Lincoln,  and  the  purity  of  Sir  Galahad.  He  is 
obviously  constructed  to  flatter  the  idealism  al- 
ways strong  in  the  great  community  of  hard- 
headed  business  citizens  of  the  United  States. 
His  career  is  improbable:  after  a  wild  youth,  he 
has  gone  West  and  shot  his  man,  and  then  returned 
to  the  home  of  his  father,  where  by  turns  he  patro- 
nizes, and  is  filled  with  a  dumb  sorrow  and  com- 
passion for  the  erring  ways  of  the  Hon.  Hilary. 
He  takes  up  and  wins  a  suit  for  a  suffering  farmer 
against  the  tyrannical  North-Eastern  Railroad, 
but  he  is  too  magnanimous  in  his  filial  affection 
to  accept  a  nomination  for  the  governorship  of 
the  state,  when  all  the  honest  citizens  come 
thronging  round,  entreating  him  to  be  the  'peo- 
ple's man.' 

"It  is  a  very  touching  conception,  but  we  may 
say  candidly  that  we  distrust  the  bona  fides  of 
these  idealized  figures.  There  is  an  unpleasant 
flavour  of  moral  bunkum,  moreover,  in  some  of 
the  situations,  as  in  the  scene  where  the  Hon,  Hil- 
ary, bowed  and  broken  by  his  uneasy  sense  of  a 
life  misspent,  defies  his  old  friend  the  President  of 
the  North-Eastern  Railroad,  and  says,  T'm  glad 
to  have  found  out  what  my  life  has  been  worth 

[264] 


SOME    REMARKS 

before  I  die.'  The  radiant  and  unselfish  Victoria, 
who,  by  the  by,  is  wearing  'a  simple  but  ex- 
quisite gown,  the  creation  of  which  aroused  the 
artist  in  a  celebrated  Parisian  dressmaker,'  with 
an  'illuminating  smile'  pierces  'the  hard  layers 
of  the  Hon.  Hilary's  outer  shell,  and  hears  the 
imprisoned  spirit  crying  with  a  small,  persistent 
voice — a  spirit  stifled  for  many  years  and  starved.' 
Then  the  Hon.  Hilary  has  a  stroke.  It  is 
a  little  simple,  this  'triumph  of  the  right,'  as  is 
also  the  ethical  flavouring  of  the  love-making  be- 
tween the  spotless  Austen  and  his  bride,  who  has 
a  'fierce  faith  that  it  was  his  destiny  to  make  the 
world  better  and  hers  to  help  him.'  When,  how- 
ever, we  leave  the  sentimental  trimmings  on  one 
side,  and  get  to  the  real  'business  politics,'  we 
may  congratulate  Mr.  Winston  Churchill  on  hav- 
ing got  his  knife  well  into  the  corporations." 

Even  in  novels  of  a  superior  order,  which  may 
be  marked  by  some  psychological  insight,  at- 
mospheric truth,  and  a  highly  consciencious  expo- 
sition of  character  and  motive,  we  find  that  the 
didactic  touch  often  robs  the  story  of  the  qualities 
of  flexible  grace  and  naturalness  which  are  essen- 
tial to  fine  craftsmanship.  A  former  criticism  of 
Mr.  James  Lane  Allen's  "The  Bride  of  the  Mistle- 
toe" may  serve  as  an  illustration : — 

[265] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

"Conscientious  is  the  term  that  best  describes 
the  spirit  and  the  workmanship  of  'The  Bride  of 
the  Mistletoe,'  as  of  so  much  of  the  work  of  the 
best  American  novelists.  Perhaps  one  of  the 
drawbacks  of  addressing  a  democracy  is  that  the 
conscientious  writer  is  led  to  take  his  responsibili- 
ties over-seriously,  and  is  careful  to  eaunciate 
nothing  that  is  not  sanctioned  by  severe  ethical 
standards  or  upheld  by  common  sense.  This  un- 
derlying correctness  of  mental  and  moral  tone  is 
apt  to  be  destructive  of  artistic  grace,  spontaneity, 
and  intensity;  and  even  in  the  most  unstudied 
moments  of  Mr.  Allen's  story  he  never  lets  the 
significant  detail  speak  for  itself,  but  swathes  it 
with  commentary,  didactic  or  sentimental.  When 
Maupassant  advises  the  young  writer  not  to  reason 
overmuch,  he  implies  that  the  force  of  the  thing 
m  itself  and  of  its  atmosphere,  which  art  conveys, 
is  impaired  by  any  obtrusive  desire  of  a  writer  to 
play  Providence  to  his  readers.  Mr.  James  Lane 
Allen  is  too  accomplished  a  writer  to  err  by  gross 
didactic  underlining,  but  a  multitude  of  subtle 
touches  betray  that  he,  like  his  hero,  is  conscious 
of  a  'task,'  of  a  'message'  which  may  'kindle  in 
American  homes  some  new  light  of  truth,  with  the 
eyes  of  mothers  and  fathers  fixed  upon  it,  and  in- 
[266] 


SOME    REMARKS 

numerable  children  of  the  future  the  better  for  its 
shining.   .   .   .  ' 

"We  could  enlarge  on  the  striking  absence  of 
economy  of  line  in  Mr.  Allen's  method,  on  its 
deliberate  impressiveness,  to  which  are  sacrificed 
grace,  ease  and  the  flash  of  the  unforeseen.  But, 
passing  much  artificiality  in  the  literary  style,  as  in 
the  description  of  a  brook  which  is  likened  to  'a 
band  of  jewelled  samite,'  or  as  in  the  phrase 
'grey-eyed  querist  of  actuality,'  when  the  hus- 
band addresses  his  wife,  we  may  point  out  that 
the  story  loses  all  illusion  of  actuality  in  passages 
of  conversation  such  as  the  following: — 

"  'Frederick,'  she  said,  'for  many  years  we 
have  been  happy  together,  so  happy !  Every  trag- 
edy of  nature  has  stood  at  a  distance  from  us,  ex- 
cept the  loss  of  our  children.  We  have  lived  on 
a  sunny  pinnacle  of  our  years,  lifted  above  life's 
storms.  But,  of  course,  I  have  realized  that, 
sooner  or  later,  our  lot  must  become  the  common 
one:  if  we  did  not  go  down  to  sorrow,  sorrow 
would  climb  to  us;  and  I  knew  that  on  the  heights 
it  dwells  best.  That  is  why  I  wish  to  say  to  you 
tonight  what  I  shall:  I  think  fate's  hour  has 
struck  for  me ;  I  am  ready  to  bear  it.  Its  sorrow 
has  already  left  the  bow  and  is  on  its  way;  I  open 

[267] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

my  heart  to  receive  it.  This  is  as  I  had  always 
wished.  I  have  said  that  if  life  had  any  greatest 
tragedy  for  me,  I  hoped  it  would  come  when  I 
was  happiest;  thus  I  should  not  know  it  all.  I 
have  never  drunk  half  of  my  cup  of  happiness,  as 
you  know,  and  let  the  other  half  waste;  I  must 
go  equally  to  the  depth  of  any  suffering.  Worse 
than  the  suffering,  I  think,  would  be  the  feeling 
that  I  had  shirked  some  of  it,  had  stepped  aside 
or  shut  my  eyes,  or  in  any  manner  shown  myself  a 
cowardly  soul,' — and  so  on. 

"It  does  not  need  much  insight  to  perceive  that 
every  sentence  here  of  Josephine's  speech  is  false 
to  nature,  and  quite  impossible  for  a  woman  in 
her  situation.  The  imagery  and  the  carefully 
balanced  periods  smell  of  the  lamp,  of  the  highly 
literary  endeavour  of  the  conscientious  writer, 
whose  strength  lies  in  meditation  and  not  in  catch- 
ing or  conveying  to  us  the  movement  and  inter- 
change of  living  things." 


It  seems  as  if  even  a  slight  dose  of  "ethical  in- 
tention" may  be  as  fatal  to  the  creation  of  a  per- 
fect illusion  or  mirage  of  life  in  an  artist's  picture 
as  is  the  bias  of  diffused  sentimentalism.     Ameri- 
[268] 


SOME    REMARKS 

can  novelists  in  general  might  ponder  the  acute 
saying  of  Joubert:  "In  painting  the  moral  side  of 
Nature,  what  the  artist  has  most  to  beware  of  is 
exaggeration;  while  in  painting  its  physical  side 
what  he  has  to  fear  most  is  weakness,"  Latter- 
day  American  story-tellers,  most  of  them,  seem  to 
be  in  a  conspiracy  to  "make  the  world  better,"  to 
"touch  the  heart,"  to  "make  you  forget  all  your 
troubles,"  to  "exalt  life  and  love,"  to  be  "a  sun- 
shine-maker." These  intentions  are  so  unfalter- 
ing, and  the  stress  laid  on  "clean  living"  is  so 
insistent,  that  one  is  forced  to  ask  one's  self 
^\^hether  the  practice  and  theory  of  living  in  Amer- 
ica are  not  antagonistic"?  whether  the  exaggerated 
sentimental  appeal  may  not  denote  a  thinness  of 
real  emotion,  and  the  persistent  absorption  with 
the  moral  issue  an  uneasy  self-distrust?  It  would 
be  as  ridiculous  to  charge  the  great  American 
people  with  being  less  honest  with  themselves 
than  are  those  of  other  nations,  as  it  would  be  to 
doubt  that  in  the  "land  of  freedom,"  there  is  less 
inner  freedom  than  elsewhere.  But  the  latter-day 
American  novel  often  leaves  one  with  an  uneasy 
idea  that  the  weight  and  momentum  of  American 
civilization  are  rolling  out  the  paste  of  human 
nature  very  flat,  and  are  stamping  it  with  machine- 
made  patterns  of  too  common  an  order. 

[269] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

Another  simile  that  obtrudes  itself  in  reading 
many  American  novels  is  that  of  a  visit  from 
kindly  folk  who  have  come  to  a  gathering  in  Sun- 
day clothes  and  with  Sunday  manners.  The 
people's  week-day  spontaneity  is  replaced  by  a 
cautious  preoccupation  with  their  deportment,  as 
to  how  they  are  expected  to  behave,  and  every- 
thing that  they  say  is  a  little  forced.  Even  in 
the  admirable  novels  of  Mb.  Wharton  and  Anne 
Douglas  Sedgwick  the  conflict  so  often  depicted 
between  the  idealism  of  the  characters  and  their 
ordinary  earthly  motives  gives  one  an  odd  feeling 
that  both  their  morals  and  their  manners  are  like 
tightly  cut  clothes  in  which  people  cannot  be 
quite  at  ease.  What  seems  odd  is  that  this  per- 
sistently active  "conscience"  apparently  forces 
the  American  novelist  to  dodge  and  evade  any 
real  examination  of  the  cleavage  between  his  so- 
called  "higher  nature"  and  the  claims  of  the 
senses.  The  blinking  of  facts  concerning  the 
appetite  of  love  was  marvellous  indeed  in  the 
Victorian  novel ;  but  the  effect  of  the  conspiracy 
of  silence  in  the  American  novel  concerning  the 
sexual  passion  is  seen  in  the  alarming  featureless- 
ness  of  its  portraits  of  women.  But  this  aspect 
of  the  subject  requires  an  essay  to  itself. 
[270] 


SOME   REMARKS 

To  bring  my  remarks  to  a  head  I  will  conclude 
by  saying  that,  whereas  the  limited  horizon  of 
modem  English  fiction,  its  lack  of  national  breadth, 
its  tameness  and  lack  of  sympathy  with  the  democ- 
racy, are  due  to  its  restricted  middle-class  outlook, 
the  American  novel  fails  by  virtue  of  its  idealistic 
bias  and  psychological  timidity.  The  novelist 
should  put  human  nature  under  the  lens  and  scru- 
tinize its  motives  and  conduct  with  the  most 
searching  and  exacting  interest.  His  esthetic 
pleasure  in  the  rich  spectacle  of  life  should  be 
backed  by  a  remorseless  instinct  for  telling  the 
truth.  But  it  is  impossible  to  combine  these 
qualities  with  the  commercial,  ethical,  and  sen- 
timental ideals  that  seem  to  make  up  Ameri- 
can ''optimism."  "America  is  strong  in  the  up- 
lift," said  the  publisher  of  "Sunshine-Makers" 
and  "Best  Sellers"  to  the  present  writer,  who,  re- 
joicing at  these  synonymous  terms,  wandered 
back  to  the  shelf  of  his  prized  American  classics, 
Walt  Whitman  and  Poe,  Mr.  W.  D.  Howells, 
Thoreau,  Miss  Sarah  Orne  Jewett,  O.  Henry, 
and  Stephen  Crane. 

1914 


[271] 


AMERICAN    CRITICISM    AND 
FICTION 


AMERICAN    CRITICISM    AND    FICTION^ 


ONE  morning,  when  I  was  reading  Mr.  Owen 
Wister's  pungent  paper  on  "Quack  Novels 
and  Democracy,"  my  maid  entered  the 
room  and  said  that  she  had  been  told  that  "an  Eng- 
lish transport  had  gone  down."  I  gazed  at  her, 
but  her  words  did  not  pierce  the  quick  till  she  ad- 
ded that  "the  dead  bodies  of  men  in  uniform  had 
been  seen  floating  on  the  water."  The  man  who 
penned  that  little  phrase  achieved  his  aim,  which 
was  to  bring  the  scene  before  one's  eyes.  A  touch 
too  much  or  too  little  and  the  scene  would  not  be 
visualized  so  clearly  or  directly.  Why  do  "official 
reports"  commonly  convey  so  little  to  one's  mind^ 
Because  they  are  dryly  and  inartistically  written, 
as  in  this  specimen  from  Petrograd : — 

"Thanks  to  the  efforts  of  our  valiant  regiments 
of  the  Caucasus  and  Turkestan,  the  resistance  of 
the  enemy  was  shattered.     His  rear-guards  which 

^  This  essay  appeared   in    The  Atlantic  Monthly,  under  the 
title  of  "A  Gossip  on  Criticism." 

[^75] 


FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

were  covering  his  retreat  were  annihilated,"  and  so 
forth. 

How  flat  and  misty  is  the  generalized  outline 
here.  We  do  not  see  the  scene,  because  there  is 
no  sharp  image  of  life  in  the  phrase,  "the  resist- 
ance of  the  enemy  was  shattered."  Nor  do  we 
need  to  hear  that  the  regiments  were  "valiant"  or 
that  rear-guards  cover  a  retreat. 

But  though  this  dispatch,  being  inartistic,  will 
not  live,  as  a  piece  of  favourable  news  it  pleased 
the  Russian  public  more,  no  doubt,  than  did  the 
grim  little  chose  vue  by  a  war  correspondent  who 
wrote  that  he  saw  the  Turkish  prisoners  fighting 
like  wild  beasts  for  scraps  of  food  in  the  cattle- 
trucks,  and  that  he  had  noticed  one  prisoner  hold 
a  wounded  comrade  down  on  his  hands  and  knees, 
and  then  mount  astride  his  back  to  eat  the  crust 
he  had  torn  from  him!  This  vivid  vignette  of 
the  horrors  of  war,  truly  artistic  in  its  pregnant 
force,  is  of  the  order  that  our  English  editors  strike 
out  of  their  columns.  Why?  Because  the  pub- 
lic is  afraid  of  knowing  things  as  they  are.  The 
artists  strive  to  make  men  understand  what  for- 
ces move  in  human  life  and  character,  but  the 
heedless  public  averts  its  eyes  from  the  great 
poets  and  artists  of  our  time,  such  as  Tolstoy  and 
Whitman,  and  feeds  on  the  vulgar  sensationalism 

[276] 


CRITICISM   AND    FICTION 

of  the  newspapers,  and  the  fiction  of  Mr.  Harold 
Bell  Wright.  This  is  not  merely  because  the  aver- 
age citizen  is  both  uncritical  and  superficial  in 
his  insight  and  taste,  but  because  the  particular 
self-interest  of  each  generation  conspires  to  ob- 
scure the  beauty  in  truth. 

What  have  these  discursive  remarks  to  do  with 
criticism*?  my  readers  may  inquire.  Well,  they 
introduce  my  little  thesis :  that  the  recurring  fail- 
ure, the  ancient  failure  of  American  criticism,  is 
its  inability  to  recognize  and  appraise  what  the 
artistic  force  in  literature  achieves,  and  that  while 
this  remains  so,  its  standard  of  critical  values 
rests  upon  sand.  It  is  not  that  I  wish  to  exalt 
English  standards.  I  make  the  admission  frankly 
that  our  criticism  suffers,  though  in  less  degree, 
from  the  same  evil.  But  the  traditional  inter- 
est of  the  English  leisured  class  in  literary  classics, 
and  some  measure  of  travel  and  liberal  education, 
have  combined  to  keep  oases  of  taste  above  the 
muddy  floods  of  mediocrity.  The  Englishman  is 
practical-minded  to  a  fault,  and  his  excessive  re- 
spect for  social  prosperity,  worldly  power,  and 
strong  character,  have  kept  him  vaguely  intoler- 
ant of  the  life  of  ideas,  and  prone  to  rate  too  low 
the  disinterested  appeal  of  art,  science,  and  letters. 
Being  a  bad  psychologist,  he  responds  very  slowly 

[277] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

to  those  profound,  witty,  or  subtle  analyses--of 
life  and  conduct  which  distinguish  the  master- 
pieces of  literature.  But  being  independent  in  his 
instincts  and  judgments  he  resists  the  contagion 
of  shibboleths  and  spiritual  shams  which,  as  Mr. 
Wister  and  others  tell  us,  afflict  American  cul- 
ture and  life.  Our  social  atmosphere  of  a  mild 
good-tempered  Philistinism  therefore  leaves  the 
writer  and  artist  in  England  free  to  go  his  way, 
and  assert  himself  as  he  wishes,  and  his  pursuits 
and  work  are  recognized  and  ministered  to  by 
some  score  "critics"  in  our  press. 

It  is  really  on  the  catholicity  of  taste  and  men- 
tal responsiveness  of  these  latter  that  the  public 
reception  of  works  of  cultivated  talent  depends. 
They  fonn  an  indispensable  bridge  between  the 
talent  and  the  public  at  large,  and  on  their  meas- 
ure of  insight  and  sincerity  it  rests  whether  a 
man  of  original  genius  can  fight  his  way  through 
to  favouring  recognition. 

But  passing  directly  to  our  inquiry  into  the  state 
of  American  criticism,  one  notes  the  divergent 
views  of  Mr.  W.  D.  Howells,  and  Mr.  Owen  Wis- 
ter. Can  they  be  reconciled?  Mr.  Howells, 
after  wittily  remarking  that  "the  production  of 
bad  fiction"  became  "a  germ  disease  which  began 
to  be  epidemic  shortly  after  the  Spanish  War  and 

[278] 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

raged  with  an  ever-increasing  virulence,"  declares 
that  American  criticism  is  not  to  blame,  "having 
shown  a  very  notable  fidelity  to  its  duty."  Mr. 
Wister,  on  his  part,  asserts  that  as  regards  liter- 
ary criticism,  America  is  still  in  the  provincial 
stage.  He  states  pointedly,  "Until  the  genteel 
critic  gathers  heart  not  only  to  brand  the  bad  but 
to  celebrate  the  good,  I  doubt  if  there  will  exist 
any  word  too  contemptuous  for  American  criti- 
cism." 

A  casual  observer  may  adduce  his  impression 
that  the  staunch  fortresses  in  America,  where 
critics  take  their  stand  in  defence  of  good  litera- 
ture, have  the  air  of  being  beleaguered  by  the  in- 
habitants and  shut  in  by  immense  wastes  of  wild, 
uncultivated  territory.  One  notes  admirable  crit- 
icism appearing  here  and  there  in  the  columns  of 
weekly  and  monthly  organs,  but  these  voices  seem 
confused  and  drowned  in  the  thundering  roar  of 
the  great  flood  tide  of  mediocrity  sweeping  past. 
And  the  attitude  of  the  rank  and  file  of  reviewers 
in  the  daily  press  (with  honourable  exceptions) 
reminds  one  of  the  triumphant  Ephraimites  at  the 
passages  of  Jordan.  If  an  unorthodox  artist  or 
poet  or  novelist  who  would  pass  over  with  his 
work  does  not  frame  the  four  great  shibboleths  a- 
right,  he  and  his  book  are  banned  and  cast  in  de- 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

rision  on  the  rocks.  These  four  shibboleths, 
tests  for  literary  righteousness,  which,  taken  to- 
gether, appear  to  exercise  the  tyranny  of  a  great 
superstition  over  the  modern  American  imagina- 
tion, might  perhaps  be  classified  as  (a)  the  com- 
mercial-success shibboleth;  (b)  the  moral  shibbo- 
leth; (c)  the  idealistic  or  sentimental  shibboleth; 
(d)  the  optimistic  shibboleth.  I  shall  not  touch 
on  them  separately  but  conjointly,  while  discuss- 
ing the  seeming  incapacity  of  the  American  mind 
to  recognize  what  the  artistic  force  in  literature 
is,  and  what  it  does  achieve. 

To  glance  for  an  instant,  however,  at  the  all- 
pervasive  influence  of  (a)  the  commercial  or  mar- 
ket-place test,^  one  may  suggest  that  it  is  time  for 
American  satirists  to  undermine  its  triumph  by 
humour  and  ridicule.  The  spectacle  of  a  great 
nation  justly  proud  of  its  lavish  resources  of  ma- 
terial refinement  and  secretly  uneasy  as  to  its 
spiritual  taste  and  culture,  might  tomorrow  in- 

1  "Our  civilization  is  still  predominatingly  commercial.  We 
all  dress,  we  all  live,  in  competition  with  the  well-to-do.  .  .  . 
The  American  has  no  social  tradition  to  sustain  him.  The  so- 
cial tradition  is  all  the  other  way:  he  must  be  a  commercial 
success,  or  he  is  a  recognized  failure.  ...  It  is  a  disgrace  not 
to  make  one's  works  justify  one's  self  by  providing  a  living  as 
good  as  one's  neighbours." — "Current  Comment."  The  Century 
Magazine,  June,  191 5. 

[280] 


CRITICISM   AND    FICTION 

spire  a  great  national  humorist.  And  the  critics 
who  scan  the  horizon  for  the  arrival  of  another 
Mark  Twain  may  be  reminded  that  he  would 
probably  have  humble  beginnings  and  hail  from 
some  obscure  provincial  district.  Let  me  say  hce, 
before  going  further,  that  I  believe  firmly  that 
American  literature  will  count  many  great,  orig- 
inal achievements  within  a  couple  of  generations. 
All  the  pith  and  sap  of  a  great  literature  are  there, 
now  inchoate  in  the  social  body,  a  ferment  of  spir- 
itual force  which  sooner  or  later  must  burst  into' 
flower.  The  blend  of  buoyancy  and  gravity  in 
the  American  temperament,  of  rare  audacity  and 
questioning  conscientiousness,  enriched  by  the  for- 
eign ingredients  lavishly  cast  for  generations  into 
the  national  melting-pot,  will  find  expression  by 
and  by  in  multiple  free-running  springs  of  orig- 
inal genius,  in  works  of  conquering  vigour  and 
triumphant  energy.  But  American  critics,  in 
their  aim  of  hailing  and  supporting  a  native  Amer- 
ican literature,  must  make  a  continuous  and  sus- 
tained effort  to  penetrate  the  blank,  rolling  mist 
of  conventional  valuations,  which  ever  threatens 
to  veil  and  smother  the  works  of  original  power 
and  beauty. 

Why  is  it  that  the  American  mind  as  repre- 


FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

sented  by  its  literature  is  so  prone  to  accept  con- 
ventional, stereotyped  valuations  in  place  of  first- 
hand, fearless  analyses'?  The  peculiar  vice  of 
commercialized  civilization,  and  especially  Ameri- 
can civilization,  lies  in  the  association  of  what  is 
useful  and  profitable  materially'  with  what  is 
mean  and  ugly  spiritually  and  aesthetically. 
The  sin  of  ugliness  is  predominant  in  the  cities. 
It  is  reflected  in  the  mental  atmosphere  of  the 
newspapers,  with  their  unending  stream  of  drab 
or  sensationally  coloured  reports  of  life's  multi- 
tudinous happenings.  The  ordinary  man  who  ea- 
gerly accepts  his  newspaper's  superficial  commen- 
taries and  its  jumbled  scrawls  and  transcripts  of 
news,  served  up  at  lightning  pressure  by  the  press- 
men on  the  trail,  does  not  ask  that  these  reports 
shall  be  palpably  idealized,  or  moralized,  or 
grossly  conventionalized.  But  when  the  poet — 
Whitman  yesterday,  or  Mr.  Robert  Frost  to- 
day— shows  us  the  essentiaHS^eauty  or  force  of 
life,  working  in  the  familiar  scene,  in  the  charac- 
teristic human  impulse,  the  American  reviewer 
applies  instinctively  his  shibboleths:  Is  this  piece 
of  literature  commercially  profitable*?  Is  it  mor- 
ally useful?  Is  it  idealistically  water-tight?  Is 
it  happy  in  its  ending? 

[282] 


CRITICISM   AND    FICTION 

This  is  the  attitude  of  mind  of  people  who  will 
not  face  truth;  and  the  artist  in  literature,  it  must 
be  repeated,  is  known  by  the  peculiar  truthfulness 
of  his  insight,  as  well  as  by  the  original  manner, 
style  and  atmosphere  in  which  the  forces  of  life 
and  nature,  men's  passions  and  appetites,  their 
characters  and  ideas,  their  impulses,  motives,  and 
actions  are  reflected  back  to  us  by  the  mirage  of 
his  art.  Let  us  take,  for  simple  demonstration, 
the  direct  description  we  first  quoted, — "The  dead 
bodies  of  men  in  uniform  were  seen  floating  in  the 
water," — and  reflect,  how  any  lurid,  sensational, 
sentimental,  or  rhetorical  account,  contributed  by 
a  vulgar  mind,  would  cheapen  the  human  appeal 
of  the  same,  the  appeal  to  our  taste  and  feeling. 
But  reflect  further  with  what  infinite  variations 
artistic  creative  genius  would  stamp,  in  perma- 
nent lines  and  hues,  the  essential  force  and  fea- 
tures of  the  tragedy  in  the  minds  of  those  relatives 
who  waited  and  watched  for  the  bringing  to  land 
of  the  bodies  of  those  drowned  men.  The  critic 
does  not  ask  that  the  artist  shall  conceal  anything 
significantly  human  in  the  scene.  The  latter  se- 
lects, and  emphasizes  as  he  selects  it,  the  char- 
acteristic and  vital.  That  is  what  we  mean  when 
we  speak  of  the  peculiar  truthfulness  of  the  artist's 

[283] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

insight:  he  illumines,  he  shows  us  the  essential 
qualities  of  things,  the  character  of  life  in  mean- 
ing perspective. 

We  all  know  what  a  reporter  would  make  of 
the  situation  described  in  Crane's  "The  Open 
Boat,"  which  is  a  masterpiece  from  the  lightning- 
like vividness  with  which  Crane  flashes  before  us 
the  tranquil  indifference  of  nature  to  the  struggles 
of  four  men  ship-wrecked  on  the  coast  of  Florida. 
The  American  reader  can  enjoy  this  little  classic 
because  its  tragic  irony  is  shot  through  and 
through  with  a  humorous  zest.  He  is  not  en- 
thusiastic over  it,  however,  because  the  story  is 
disconcerting  to  his  pathetic  belief  that  things 
must  come  right  in  the  end.  But  let  us  suppose 
that  a  commonplace  writer  were  to  compose  {a) 
a  pathetic  story  of  the  oiler's  death,  or  (^)  a  sen- 
sational description  of  the  landing  of  the  bodies 
of  the  Lusitania  victims.  Let  us  suppose,  also, 
(c)  that  a  creative  artist  of  the  rank  of  Crane  or 
Maupassant,  handling  the  latter  theme,  were 
to  put  the  narrative  in  the  mouth  of  a  callous 
reporter,  who,  greedy  after  "copy,"  was  in- 
quisitively probing  into  a  mother's  anguish.  An 
uncritical  audience  would  be  highly  affected  by 
tales  (a)  and  (b),  but  the  majority  of  reviewers 

[284] 


CRITICISM    AND    FICTION 

would  greet  the  tale  (c)  with  a  chorus  of  condem- 
nation of  the  "sordidness"  or  "brutality"  of  its 
realism,  not  perceiving  that  its  remorseless  expos- 
ure of  heartlessness  would  be  a  far  more  powerful 
appeal  to  an  understanding  of  good  and  evil,  and 
so  to  our  sense  of  the  beautiful,  than  would  the 
rather  sugary  pathos  of  tales  (a)  and  (b).  The 
commonplace  mind,  disliking  to  face  the  truth, 
would  style  tale  (c)  "repellent,"  forgetting  the 
Biblical  tale  of  King  David's  evil  dealings  with 
Uriah  the  Hittite  (II  Samuel,  41).  And  had 
Maupassant  given  us  a  variant  in  his  best  manner, 
of  the  story  of  Amnon's  rape  of  his  sister  Tamar, 
and  of  his  murder  by  his  brother  Absolom  (II 
Samuel,  13),  the  American  press  and  public  would 
indignantly  protest  that  the  subject  was  "inde- 
cent" and  was  indeed  altogether  outside  the  pale 
of  art  I  But  nothing  is  outside  the  pale  of  art. 
And  all  such  critics  would  be  in  the  wrong  did 
they  fail  to  recognize  that  the  remorseless  tale  of 
Amnon  is  great  by  its  stern  outlines,  by  the  stern 
truthfulness  with  which  it  mirrors  the  destructive 
passions  of  the  deceitful  heart  of  man. 

Observe  that  the  common  failure  of  the  ordinary 
man  to  recognize  great  art  when  he  sees  it  arises 
at  root  from  his  own  weakness.     When  he  sees  a 

[285] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

base  act  in  life,  the  normal  man  reacts  against  it, 
and  knows  very  well  where  to  place  evil  in  the 
scale  of  his  human  judgments.  Nay  I  he  even  be- 
comes a  good  artist  himself  when  he  has  known  a 
terrible  or  brutal  experience,  and  when  he  re- 
counts to  others  a  narrative  such  as  tale  {b). 
But  the  very  same  man  who,  reacting  thus  against 
the  cruelty  of  living  fact,  would  indignantly 
burst  through  the  network  of  conventional  shib- 
boleths, did  the  critics  try  to  close  his  mouth,  will 
employ  these  shibboleths  himself  to  close  Mau- 
passant's mouth!  Why?  It  is  owing  to  his  own 
mental  simplicity  that  the  ordinary  reader  grows 
confused  and  unhappy  when  Tolstoy  or  Maupas- 
sant bids  him  watch  in  the  mirror  of  art  the 
nature  of  evil  or  the  strands  of  cruelty  in  life. 
He  is  then  made  to  realize  acutely  that  cruelty 
and  baseness  are  not  merely  incarnated  there  in 
in  the  enemy's  figure  before  him  but  they  are  for- 
ces here^  latent  in  his  own  heart  and  interwoven 
in  the  whole  scheme  of  nature;  and  being  now, 
not  active  in  doing,  but  passive  in  receiving,  he 
feels  his  faith  disturbed  and  grows  distressed. 
It  is  the  artist's  cunning  force,  the  intensity  of 
the  Biblical  artist's  or  of  Tolstoy's  unsparing 
analyses  of  the  devious  springs  of  men's  impulses 
[286] 


CRITICISM    AND    FICTION 

and  actions,  that  attacks  the  reader's  naive  wish 
to  see  merely  the  "presentable"  surface,  the 
idealized  exterior  of  life. 

And,  correspondingly,  the  parrot  cry  for  con- 
ventional values  that  today  dominates  the  popular 
mind  in  America  is  largely  the  fear  ot  commercial- 
ized society  lest  it  should  be  told  unpleasant 
truths  about  itself;  lest  the  unpleasant  gulf  be- 
tween its  daily  practice  and  its  "ideal"  should 
be  sounded  by  the  artist.  Similarly  the  puritan's 
confused  fear  of  sensuous  beauty,  and  his  des- 
perate shutting  of  the  eyes  to  the  interdependence 
of  body  and  soul,  of  flesh  and  spirit,  is  a  sign 
of  his  own  weakness,  of  his  lack  of  truthfulness. 
In  such  an  atmosphere  of  make-believe,  there ' 
is  and  can  be  neither  real  art  nor  real  beauty, 
dominated  as  it  is  by  considerations  ot  utility 
and  material  profit  and  "ideals,"  and  divorced 
as  it  is  from  mental  sincerity  and  the  beauty 
of  truth.  The  only  art  that  is  possible  is  the 
art  of  the  parlour,  with  its  polite  appearances 
and  polite  conversations;  and  indeed  the  art  of  a 
typical  "best  seller"  is  one  that  goes  with  the  best 
parlour,  with  its  neat  carpet  and  gilt-framed  pic- 
tures and  easy  chairs  and  airless  atmosphere. 
The  people  who  thrive  there  have  no  conception 

[287] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

of  what  art  is,  for  they  imagine  art  should 
sustain  them  in  their  narrow  ideas  of  "good,"  and 
their  sugary  sentimentalism  and  their  restless  gos- 
pel of  "getting  on." 

This  would  not  be  worth  emphasizing  if  for 
three  generations  the  great  majority  of  American 
critics  had  not  sheltered  themselves  behind  the 
fence  of  mild  academicism  and  conventional  ver- 
dicts. They  have  never  associated  art  with  the 
simple  enjoyment  of  life  as  a  spectacle,  never 
hailed  with  understanding  such  pure  pieces  of  art 
as  Crane's  "An  Experiment  in  Misery,"  where  his 
description  of  a  vagrant's  misery  in  a  grimy  lodg- 
ing-house infects  one  with  all  the  sesthetic  joy- 
ousness  that  is  traditionally  associated  with 
Botticelli's  Spring. 

But  it  is  unnecessary  to  adduce  instances  to 
drive  home  our  contention,  that  if  the  artistic 
force  in  literature  be  that  force  which  reproduces 
and  transmits  to  us  the  artist's  temperamental 
sensations  of  life  or  nature,  any  parti  pris  in  the 
shape  of  conventional  valuations,  or  of  preju- 
dices, social  and  moral,  is,  ipso  facto^  fatal  to 
good  criticism.  All  a  priori  valuations  must  be 
directly  in  conflict  with  critical  catholicity  of 
taste  and  a  disinterested,  intuitive  response  to  the 
original  manner^  qualitv,  and  atmosphere  of 
[288] 


CRITICISM   AND    FICTION 

the  author  s  jnethod.  The  critic's  duty  tis, 
first,  to  lend  an  attentive  ear  to  what  the  new 
artist  is  telling  us,  and  how  he  is  telling  it,  and 
then  to  determine  his  rank  according  to  the  orig- 
inal force  and  beauty  of  his  achievement.  That 
is  all,  but  the  critic  knows  well  that  it  is  precisely 
because  the  new  creative  vision,  be  it  Poe's  or 
Whitman's  or  Crane's,  is  so  original,  that  it 
affects  the  contemporary  mind  as  something 
strange  and  disturbing  and  excites  the  hostility 
of  the  commonplace  person. 

Ill 

The  commonplace  person  I — the  secret  is  out. 
The  failure  of  modern  criticism  generally  and  of 
American  criticism  in  particular,  is  that  it  in- 
stinctively defers  to  and  exalts  the  common- 
place view.  It  has  a  taste  for  mediocrity.  I  take 
up  a  novel  by  Mr.  W.  D.  Howells,  and  I  see  that 
the  quality  of  his  literary  work  is  peculiar  to 
himself  and  is  unmistakable.  No  one  ever  wrote 
precisely  like  this,  and  no  one  ever  will  again. 
And  so  with  the  stories  of,  say,  Crane  and  Frank 
Norris  and  O.  Henry,  or  the  works  of  Grace 
King  and  Robert  Frost,  "The  Pleasant  Ways  of 
St.  Medard"  and  "North  of  Boston";  they  have 

[289] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

added  by  their  quality  of  vision  to  the  stock  of 
artistic  riches;  they  are  sharply  unique,  with  a 
particular  subtlety  of  their  own.  But  when  I 
take  up,  say,  "The  Harbor"  by  Mr.  Poole, 
"The  Titan"  by  Mr.  Dreiser,  or  "The  Far  Coun- 
try" by  Mr.  Winston  Churchill,  if  I  perceive 
that  their  experience  and  sensations  of  life  do 
not  add  this  fresh  beauty  in  quality  of  vision 
or  style,  I  know  where  to  place  them.  Where? 
In  a  different,  a  lower  category.  They  deserve 
an  honourable  place.  They  are  to  be  welcomed 
and  prized,  but — and  this  distinction  is  vital — 
their  creative  imagination  only  multiplies  pat- 
terns of  insight  and  feeling  of  masses  or  groups 
of  cultivated  minds  round  us.  The  works — 
showing  indeed  talented  observation  and  in- 
sight— of  this  latter  class  of  writers,  however 
much  they  diverge  as  individuals  in  experience 
and  outlook,  are  not  sufficiently  rich  in  creative 
originality,  and  so  they  belong  to  the  cultivated 
mass.  That  is  their  value  and  their  limita- 
tion. 

"But  wait  a  little,"  the  kind  reader  may  ex- 
claim,— "now  you  contradict  yourself.  You  first 
asserted  that  the  sentence  The  dead  bodies  of 
men  in  uniform  were  seen  floating  on  the  water' 
was  intuitively  artistic.  Well,  is  there  anything 
[290] 


CRITICISM    AND    FICTION 

'sharply  unique'  in  the  quality  of  that  descrip- 
tion? And  does  not  'The  Harbor'  offer  us  many 
admirable  descriptions  on  this  broad  level  of 
'artistic'  excellence?"  To  this  the  answer  is 
that  genuine  artistic  force  is  certainly  in  evidence 
in  the  planning  and  execution  of  "The  Harbor," 
and  this  has  enabled  Mr.  Poole  to  give  pleasure 
and  instruction  to  scores  of  thousands  of  Ameri- 
can readers,  and  to  Mr.  Howells  himself;  but  that 
the  artistic  force  diffused  throughout  the  book  no- 
where bursts  into  the  fire  of  genius.  His  art  acts 
as  a  good  steady  illuminant  of  his  theme,  and  is 
turned  on  like  gas  in  a  chandelier,  nicely  regulated 
by  his  skilful  care  and  judgment;  but  his  art  is 
never  fused  by  exquisite  touches  into  the  flame  of 
inspiration.  As  art  it  is  on  the  highest  level  of 
mediocrity.  Observe  we  say  the  highest  level ; 
for  could  Mr.  Poole  take  one  step  upwards,  only 
one  step,  he  would  attain  the  rank  which  is 
denied  to  thousands  of  highly  talented  men. 

And — to  repeat  a  criticism  that  we  have  offered 
elsewhere — first  let  us  consider  his  strength  and 
weakness.  A  novel  that  is  planned  on  symmetri- 
cal, powerful  lines,  that  aims  at  picturing  in  just 
perspective  the  struggle  between  the  shipping 
companies  and  the  captains  of  industry,  with 
Wall  Street  behind  them,  and  the  exploited  mass 
[291] 


FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

of  dockers,  stokers,  labourers, — a  novel  that  has 
breadth  of  vision  and  atmospheric  actuality, —  for 
this  one  ought  indeed  to  be  grateful.  It  may  be 
owned  frankly  that  the  novel  of  large  social  vision, 
in  which  the  life  of  modern  types  is  shown  as  con- 
ditioned by  mass  movements  and  the  pressure  of 
economic  forces,  is  rarely  offered  us.  The  Anglo- 
Saxon  novelist,  unlike  the  Latin,  has  little  apti- 
tude for  generalization,  is  weak  in  the  architec- 
tural sense,  and  derives  from  the  individual,  par- 
ticular unit,  achieving  national  significance  or  ep- 
ical breadth  by  accident,  as  it  were,  as  in  "Tom 
Jones"  and  "Vanity  Fair."  Indeed,  in  most 
of  the  exceptions  to  this  rule,  as  Frank  Norris's 
"The  Pit"  and  Mr  Galsworthy's  "The  Man  of 
Property,"  one  detects  very  quickly  the  influence 
of  the  French  naturalists.  No  doubt  Mr.  Poole 
not  only  has  a  natural  gift  for  viewing  society  in 
the  large,  but  his  philosophic  sense  has  been  stim- 
ulated and  trained  by  the  study  of  good  models. 
His  canvas,  ambitious  in  size,  is  not  grandiose; 
his  central  purpose,  the  delineation  of  the  great 
Harbour  as  a  tidal  way  of  human  energies,  chang- 
ing with  the  generations,  focusing  and  radiating, 
receiving  and  giving  forth  new  forces  and  forms 
of  the  nation's  development,  does  not  dwarf  his 
characters.  In  fact,  so  far  as  charity  of  design, 
[292] 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

structural  skill,  descriptive  talent,  and  faithful 
observation  can  prevail,  "The  Harbor"  is  con- 
scientious and  spirited.  It  is  a  novel  that  holds 
one's  attention  by  the  interest  and  variety  of  its 
scenes,  one  that  is  instructive,  one  that  rarely 
falls  in  execution  beneath  a  certain  level  stan- 
dard of  excellence.  What  more  do  you  want, 
then*?  the  American  critics  may  ask.  It  seems 
ungrateful  to  reply  that  "The  Harbor"  is  lack- 
ing both  in  imaginative  intensity  and  in  artis- 
tic originality. 

Mr.  Poole's  audience  is  not  indeed  affronted 
by  a  strange  vision,  by  a  style  peculiar  in  quality, 
by  characters,  spiritual  atmosphere  or  aesthetic 
force  intense  and  self-centred.  Any  intelligent 
person  can  understand  and  appreciate  "The  Har- 
bor," which  is,  indeed,  primarily  a  work  of  sound 
intelligence,  and  not  one  of  artistic  inspiration. 
The  wiry,  quick-witted  young  hero,  Billy,  who 
"makes  good"  at  college,  and  later  as  a  magazine 
writer  wins  success,  and  marries  a  sweet  and  capa- 
ble girl,  Eleanore,  has  no  individuality;  neither 
has  Eleanore,  who  is  an  amalgam  of  feminine 
virtues.  His  father,  who  typifies  the  out-of-date 
American  ship-owner,  with  his  belief  in  a  big 
mercantile  marine;  and  her  father,  Dillon,  the 
masterful  engineer,  who  concentrates  on  the  eco- 

[293] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

nomic  problem  of  organizing  the  port  and  the 
traffic  of  the  railways  and  the  shipping  lines  on  a 
scientific  basis,  are  no  doubt  representative,  but 
are  almost  devoid  of  personal  features.  Even 
Joe  Kramer,  the  fiery  Socialist,  whose  life  work 
it  is  to  champion  the  sweated  worker  against 
the  forces  of  capitalism  and  commercialism,  is 
at  best  a  silhouette,  living  in  his  energetic  ges- 
tures and  fighting  power,  but  never  intimately 
portrayed  in  his  idiosyncrasies.  Joe's  revolution- 
ary activities  in  Russia  and  on  European  battle- 
fields are  as  obviously  imaginary  as  Billy's  view 
of  Paris  is  "made  in  America."  The  people  are 
not  distinguished  one  from  another  by  those  sub- 
tle inflections  of  manner  and  feeling  by  which 
character  declares  itself.  So  with  their  personal 
relations — they  are  generalized,  not  particular- 
ized. Thus,  one  knows  nothing  more  of  Billy's 
and  Eleanore's  married  life  than  they  are  affec- 
tionate with  one  another,  that  she  is  any  good 
wife,  and  that  he  is  any  hard-working  husband. 
Better,  in  its  suggestive  touch  of  surprise,  is  the 
sketch  of  the  relations  of  Marsh,  the  strike-leader, 
with  the  disillusioned,  bitter  Mrs.  Marsh.  This 
shows  more  artistic  cunning,  precisely  because  it 
discloses  the  fresh  gesture  of  a  snapshot  from  life. 
If  we  are  not  much  interested  by  the  fugitive  epi- 
[294] 


CRITICISM   AND    FICTION 

sode  of  Joe  Kramer's  and  Sue's  love-affair,  it  is  not 
because  it  is  unconvincing,  but  because  the  author 
has  not  shown  us  in  intimate  detail  how  this  man 
and  woman  affected  one  another.  The  general 
lines  of  their  actions  and  behaviour  are  there,  but 
not  the  revealing  minutiae. 

Mr.  Howells  suggests  that  an  analogy  may  be 
drawn  between  Mr.  Poole's  epical  aim  and  that  of 
his  predecessor,  Frank  Norris.  Between  their 
aims,  certainly.  But  turn  to  the  first  chapter  of 
"The  Octopus"  and  note  the  nervous,  resourceful, 
and  sure  handling  of  the  characters  of  Presley, 
Harran,  Annixter,  and  Varamee.  What  supple- 
ness, dexterity,  and  intimacy  of  touch!  You 
know  the  men  through  and  through, — their  shap- 
ing circumstances  and  the  laws  of  their  being. 
You  feel  the  impelling  force  of  their  tempera- 
ments in  their  gestures  and  voices,  as  they  halt  or 
go  forward,  constrained  by  their  aims,  and  by  the 
winds  of  their  destiny.  But  there  is  nothing  of 
this  psychological  force  and  nervous  creative  in- 
tensity in  Mr.  Poole's  characterization.  His  peo- 
ple are  impelled  and  controlled,  so  to  say,  each 
by  a  separate  automatic  switch,  visible  in  the  au- 
thor's grip,  which  imparts  to  them  each  one  set  of 
motives,  one  manner  of  feeling,  and  one  way  of 
affecting  the  spectator.  The  photographer  has 
[295] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

posed  them  in  one  special  attitude,  and  bade  them 
look  straight  in  front,  while  he  takes  the  likeness. 
They  do  not  change  and  fluctuate,  and  ripen  be- 
fore our  eyes,  like  Norris's  people.  Again,  note 
in  "The  Octopus"  how  the  sense  of  personal  con- 
tacts, of  the  shock  and  hurry  of  incident,  of  daily 
accident,  of  the  coming  and  going  and  pressure  and 
surge  of  life,  all  blend  into  the  epic  force  of  the 
drama,  which  moves  in  actual  heat  and  energy 
before  the  spectators'  gaze,  there  in  the  teem- 
ing Californian  arena.  But  Mr.  Poole's  drama, 
again,  is  largely  static.  The  confusion  and  sur- 
prise of  life  are  not  conveyed  in  his  studied,  cine- 
matographic arrangements  which  carry  on  his 
story,  indeed,  and  us  with  it,  from  point  to  point. 
Only  in  his  strike  scenes  do  we  gain  an  actual 
sense  of  movement,  collision,  interfusion,  and  in- 
tricacy. 

But  how  ungrateful  to  draw  this  invidious  com- 
parison between  "The  Octopus"  and  "The  Har- 
bor" I  Mr.  Poole  has  never  claimed  that  his  work 
ranks  with  Norris's,  and  he  would  be  the  first  to 
admit  that  in  subtlety  of  touch,  as  well  as  in  its 
richness  of  artistic  illusion,  it  is  inferior  to  that 
youthful  master's.  We  should  owe  him  an  apol- 
ogy for,  Procrustes-like  stretching  his  valuable, 
carefully  wrought  novel  on  the  bed  of  a  genius,  did 

[296] 


CRITICISM   AND    FICTION 

not  the  critics  so  constantly  fail  to  draw  the  line 
between  the  novel  of  skilful  talent  and  the  novel 
of  creative  genius.  It  is  with  fiction  as  with  that 
large  majority  of  modern  works  of  art  in  our  gal- 
leries, works  which,  however  excellent  in  design 
and  technical  skill,  are  deficient  in  temperamen- 
tal originality.  Talented  as  they  are,  they  are, 
in  fact,  "brain-spun." 

IV 

When  the  critic  turns  to  "The  Titan,"  he  is  faced 
with  the  old  dilemma.  Ought  he  to  insist  on  the 
particular  significance  for  society  which  a  novel 
may  possess  as  a  document  of  life*?  Or  ought  he 
rather  to  lay  stress  on  its  aesthetic  shortcomings'? 
This  critic  has  observed  elsewhere :  "To  subject  a 
piece  of  contemporary  literature  to  high  sesthetic 
literary  standards  is  often  simply  to  suppress  its 
significance.  As  the  majority  of  new  words  are  but 
the  age's  ephemeral  children,  they  can  only  make 
an  appeal  to  their  parent  age ;  the  critic's  duty  is 
therefore  to  fix,  in  the  significant  documents  of 
the  life  of  his  time,  the  character  of  his  age;  and  to 
the  majority  of  literary  works  he  will  do  justice 
by  treating  them  as  revelations  of  the  contempo- 
rary mind,  knowing  that  though  the  inner  indivi- 
[297] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

dual  spirit  of  these  documents  may  be  of  little 
significance,  its  testimony  to  the  overlordship  of 
the  age  may  be  of  very  much."  And  Mr.  Dreiser 
is  very  significant  I  Very  unrepresentative  he  is 
in  his  honest,  set  determination  to  tell  his  country- 
men all  those  sinister,  ugly  truths  concerning  the 
national  life,  with  which  their  newspapers  teem, 
but  for  mirroring  which  in  fiction  the  novelist  is 
boycotted. 

And  yet  how  representative  is  Mr.  Dreiser  in 
his  disregard  for  beauty,  for  beauty  in  form,  for 
the  fine  shades  of  living  subtlety !  How  is  one  to 
account  for  this  curious  contradiction  in  the  au- 
thor's attitude*?  One  hazards  the  suggestion  that 
Mr.  Dreiser  has  been  seduced  by  Balzac's  exam- 
ple— Balzac  who  was  defined  as  being  "a  sociolo- 
gist rather  than  a  novelist."  If  only  our  author 
had  studied  Horace  instead  I  It  is  not  a  question 
of  "realism,"  for  Horace's  descriptions  of  the  daily 
life  of  the  Roman  citizen  are  quite  as  intimately 
"realistic"  as  are  Mr.  Dreiser's  descriptions  of  the 
life  of  his  Chicago  financiers.  But  while  Horace 
selects  the  essential  detail  and  rejects  everything 
superfluous,  Mr.  Dreiser  rejects  nothing!  Every- 
thing goes  into  his  pot! 

To  quote  here  a  former  criticism,  "We  see  a 
bold  American  hand  in  the  encomium  blazoned  on 

[298] 


CRITICISM   AND    FICTION 

the  book's  wrapper — 'The  size  of  this  man,  Cow- 
perwood,  genius  of  finance,  protagonist  of  great 
business  combines,  art  patron,  light  o'  love,  and 
the  scope  of  Mr.  Dreiser's  ability  are  united  in 
this  new  book,  totally  unlike  fiction  as  we  have 
come  to  know  it — a  book  big  in  matter  and  a  long 
book  too'  and  so  forth.  There  you  have  it  I  the 
national  conviction  that  size  counts  for  more 
than  quality,  that  a  big  book  or  a  big  business 
must  necessarily  dwarf  the  appeal  of  books  or  busi- 
nesses of  lesser  scope  or  compass.  ,  .  .  We  can- 
not concede  the  claim  that  the  multiplicity  of  the 
titanic  Mr.  Cowperwood's  love-atfairs  invests  them 
with  more  interest  than  does  the  solitary  infidel- 
ity of  the  little  grocer  in  the  back  street  round  the 
corner.  On  the  contrary  the  grocer's  conjugal 
lapse  is  likely  to  mean  more  to  him  and  his  family. 
All  Mr.  Cowperwood's  amours  run  much  the  same 
course,  and  as  soon  as  we  have  grasped  this  we 
become  comparatively  uninterested  in  the  identity 
of  the  next  candidate  for  his  affections  or  in  the 
fate  that  awaits  her.  Indeed,  these  ladies,  Aileen, 
Rita,  Stephanie,  Claudia,  et  cetera,  till  we 
reach  the  last  of  the  cluster,  Berenice,  are  not 
much  more  interesting  than  are  a  set  of  chairs  in 
a  'parlour  suite.' 

"So  with  the  millionaire's  lavish  dealings  as  an 

[299] 


FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

'art  patron.'  We  are  told  that  'in  London  he 
bought  a  portrait  by  Raeburn;  in  Paris  a  plough- 
ing scene  by  Millet,  a  small  Jan  Steen,  a  battle- 
piece  by  Meissonier,  and  a  romantic  courtyard 
scene  by  Isabey';  and  later  on,  that  the  fascinat- 
ing American  girl,  Berenice,  when  she  saw  the 
Greek  frieze  in  his  splendid  New  York  mansion, 
'knew  that  he  and  she  had  one  God  in  common — 
Art;  and  that  his  mind  was  fixed  on  things  beau- 
tiful as  on  a  shrine.'  Gammon  I  The  Titan's 
knowledge  of  art  only  reflected  what  his  dealer 
and  his  check-book  told  him,  and  he  would  have 
purchased  with  lavish  enthusiasm  that  vulgar 
series  of  Fragonards  that  have  recently  passed  and 
repassed,  at  fabulous  prices,  into  the  possession  of 
his  fellow  American  millionaires.  The  real 
shrine  at  which  Berenice  and  her  magnate  worship 
is  the  shrine  of  money-power,  and  that  is  why 
Mr.  Dreiser's  detailed  exposition  of  his  Chicago 
boss's  career  has  national  significance,  although  its 
value  as  art  is  intrinsically  small. 

"No,  Mr.  Dreiser's  eulogistic  wrapper  hits  the 
wrong  nail  on  the  head  when  it  claims  that  'the 
book  is  totally  unlike  fiction  as  we  have  come  to 
know  it.'  On  the  contrary,  its  merit  is  that  in 
its  heavy,  lumbering  conscientious  way,  'The  Ti- 
tan' presents  a  la  Balzae,  a  detailed  picture  of 
[300] 


CRITICISM    AND    FICTION 

Mammon- worship  in  the  States  a  generation  back : 
a  picture  of  the  swamp  of  public  corruption,  of 
'graft'  and  'boodle'  and  private  greed,  in  which 
the  jungle  of  'financial  interests'  is  enrooted. 
Frank  Cowperwood,  the  financier,  just  released 
from  a  Philadelphia  prison,  makes  a  fresh  start  in 
the  rising  city,  Chicago;  and  Mr.  Dreiser  traces 
with  unrelenting,  praiseworthy  frankness  the  sor- 
did maze  of  intrigue,  bribery,  and  corruption 
which  the  Titan  threads  to  gain  his  throne  of 
moneyrpower.  It  is  the  story  of  a  human  jungle 
and  of  financial  beasts  of  prey  stalking  and  strik- 
ing down  'a  democracy  grovelling  and  wallowing, 
slowly,  blindly  trying  to  stagger  to  its  feet.' 
The  author  is  to  be  congratulated  on  his  exposure, 
not  only  of  the  intricate  web  of  intrigue,  financial 
and  political,  which  the  'masterful'  Cowperwood 
spins  in  order  to  secure  his  'controlling  interests' 
in  the  gas  companies  and  street  railways  of  Chi- 
cago, but  of  the  atmosphere  of  hypocrisy  which  the 
wealthy  citizens,  the  bank  presidents,  and  direc- 
tors of  trusts  and  combines  generate  for  their  own 
purposes. 

"Of  course,  there  is  nothing  particularly  new  in 
the  picture,  but  Mr.  Dreiser  is  one  of  the  very  few 
American  novelists  who  have  dared  to  dispense 
with  the  idealistic  veils  under  which,  in  fiction, 

[301] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

the  unpleasant  truth  gracefully  hides  its  features. 
The  pity  is  that,  obsessed  by  the  idea  of  bigness, 
the  author  insists,  so  to  say,  on  dragging  us  up  to 
every  floor  of  his  giant  hotel,  and  making  us  peep 
into  all  the  offices  and  suites  of  apartments. 

"Now  this  method  is  a  clumsy  one  in  art  and 
defeats  its  purpose.  Mr.  Dreiser  rarely  intro- 
duces a  character  without  giving  a  comprehensive 
sketch  of  his  past  and  his  social  position,  and  we 
soon  grow  bored  by  the  multiplicity  of  explana- 
tions and  conversations,  all  of  equal  significance. 
There  is  no  play  of  light  and  shade  in  the  novel, 
but  everything  is  exhibited  in  the  hard,  level  glare, 
so  to  speak,  of  an  enormous  chamber  lit  from  the 
ceiling.  Crowds  of  people  come  and  go,  and  one 
remembers  little  more  of  them  than  of  a  file  of 
faces  passing  in  an  interminable  procession.  The 
artist,  above  all  things,  needs  so  to  select  and  con- 
centrate his  details  that  his  figures  contrast,  and 
his  scenes  interest  by  dramatic  surprise.  But 
there  is  no  surprise  and  no  relief  in  Mr.  Dreiser's 
human  drama :  everything  sweeps  past  our  eyes  at 
the  same  level  pace,  as  on  a  train  journey.  It  is 
a  pity,  for  at  times  one  suspects  that  the  scenes 
closely  crowded  together  are  like  pictures  in  exhi- 
bitions, which  kill  one  another  by  numbers  and 
by  mere  proximity.  But  this  is  the  logical  effect 
[302] 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 

of  the  worship  of  Bigness,  whether  in  art  or  com- 
merce or  civilization;  the  charm  of  individuality 
is  crushed  down  till  it  is  lost  in  a  mass  of  pon- 
derous uniformity.  The  colossal  ends  in  the  in- 
significant." 

Whereas  Mr.  Poole's  failure  lay  in  lack  of  in- 
tensity of  creative  imagination,  Mr.  Dreiser  fails 
in  his  inability  to  show  human  drama  in  its  true 
spiritual  perspective,  and  to  stamp  it  in  perma- 
nent lines  and  hues  of  beauty.  In  both  cases  the 
rich  stuff  of  the  teeming  national  life  is  before 
us,  in  both  cases  the  treatment  is  ambitious  and 
highly  conscientious,  but  in  neither  case  is  there 
born  anything  unique  in  quality  of  vision  or  style. 
We  may  therefore  repeat  that  the  creative  imagi- 
nation of  each  of  our  two  authors  only  multiplies 
general  patterns  of  insight  and  feeling  of  masses 
or  groups  of  cultivated  minds.  And  the  critic, 
passing  on,  will  search  all  the  more  eagerly  for 
authors  who,  whether  representative  or  not,  stand 
out  more  clearly  in  vision  and  insight  from  the 
mass  of  cultivated  minds.  Such  an  author,  it 
seems  to  me,  is  Miss  Gather,  whose  delightful  pic- 
ture of  the  life  of  a  family  of  Swedish  immigrants 
in  a  Nebraskan  homestead  is  no  doubt  known  to 
the  reader  of  The  Atlantic  Monthly.  I  shall  not 
therefore  offer  here  any  appreciation  of  the  fresh- 
[303] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

ness  of  its  individual  charm,  or  of  the  calm 
strength  of  her  portraiture  of  the  Bergsons,  of 
Alexandra,  the  large-hearted  heroine,  of  Frank  and 
Marie  Shabata,  of  Emil,  Ivar,  and  Amedee.  This 
work,  "O  Pioneers,"  with  its  record,  so  typical,  of 
a  network  of  immigrant  roots  which  are  thrusting 
deep  into  American  soil,  and  fructifying  the  na- 
tional life  with  its  ramifying  human  energies,  be- 
longs to  a  precious,  if  small,  class  of  American 
novels  which  it  is  difficult  to  praise  too  highly. 

Even  higher,  in  its  literary  art,  must  we  rank 
Grace  King's  "The  Pleasant  Ways  of  St.  Med- 
ard,"  a  story  rare  in  its  historical  significance. 
This  poignant  lament  for  the  South,  at  the  close  of 
the  Civil  War,  rehearses  a  woman's  lingering 
memories  of  the  charm  and  grace  of  the  New  Or- 
leans atmosphere,  and  of  the  humiliation  suffered 
by  a  ruined  family.  Will  not  its  exquisite  shades 
of  feeling,  delicate  in  vibrating  sadness,  give 
this  novel  a  permanent  place  as  an  American  lit- 
erary classic? 


To  recapitulate :  as  regards  fiction  and  poetry  no 
subject  or  theme  is  outside  the  pale  of  art.     The 

[304] 


CRITICISM   AND    FICTION 

literary  artist  is  known  by  the  spirit  of  his  treat- 
ment; and  fresh  beauties,  fresh  forces  are  gen- 
erated in  a  greater  or  lesser  degree  by  the  work  of 
creative  spirits. 

It  is  by  this  unique  temperamental  quality, 
something  peculiar  to  himself  as  expressed  in  the 
tresh  intensity,  power,  or  charm  of  his  imagina- 
tion and  insight,  that  we  assess  the  rank  of  a 
literary  artist. 

It  is  from  the  perception  of  the  significant  re- 
lations of  the  living  parts  to  the  general  scheme 
of  nature  and  life  that  new  pieces  of  art  are  con- 
tinually being  born. 

Any  conventional  valuations,  social  or  moral, 
as  to  what  is  "good,"  "beautiful,"  or  "useful,"  or 
any  stereotyped  academic  or  aesthetic  formulas  are 
necessarily  inimical  to  the  powers  of  art. 

In  mediocre  art  the  public  sees  its  own  face  as  in 
a  glass,  and  loves  to  see  mirrored  back  to  it  its 
own  familiar  features. 

The  critic  may  aim  at  showing  what  significant 
light  a  piece  of  indifferent  or  bad  art  may  cast  on 
the  life  of  society,  but  his  main  object  is,  first  to 
lend  an  attentive  ear  to  what  a  literary  artist  is 
telling  us,  and  then  to  make  clear  anything  false, 
commonplace,  or  weak  in  his  outlook  or  treatment, 
[305] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

and  to  hail  any  elements  of  original  power  or 
beauty. 

It  is  time  to  bring  to  a  close  this  gossip  on  criti- 
cism, but  before  doing  so  the  writer  would  like  to 
direct  his  readers'  attention  to  the  work  of  a  nov- 
elist of  rank,  Mr.  Vincent  O'SuUivan — work 
which,  we  fancy,  has  curiously  almost  escaped 
the  attention  of  the  Americans,  This  is  prob- 
ably due  in  great  part  to  the  fact  that  Mr.  O' Sul- 
livan has  spent  many  years  abroad.  His  last 
novel,  "The  Good  Girl,"  the  story  of  the  victim- 
ization of  the  American  hero,  Vendred,  by  an 
English  family,  the  Dovers,  who  sponge  and  prey 
upon  him,  finding  their  weapon  in  his  infatuation 
lor  the  beautiful  Mrs.  Dover,  is  one  of  accom- 
plished psychological  skill.  The  portraiture  of 
Mrs.  Dover,  a  self-indulgent  and  sensuous  nature, 
is  a  triumph  of  artistic  veracity,  and  the  relations 
of  both  husband  and  wife  to  their  victim,  relations 
which  are  veiled  by  a  mask  of  sinister  shadowi- 
ness,  are  painted  with  true  subtlety.  One  could 
wish  that  the  author  had  replaced  some  of  the 
discursive  episodes  of  his  detailed  narrative  by  a 
bolder  and  intenser  dramatic  handling  of  his  main 
situation.  One  may  add  also  that  the  analysis 
of  the  character  of  the  weak  hero,  Vendred,  is 
wanting  in  sharp  precision.     But  whatever  be  its 

[306] 


CRITICISM    AND    FICTION 

artistic  flaws,  "The  Good  Girl"  is  one  of  the  most 
accomplished  novels  of  its  year,  one  that  entitles 
its  author  to  a  place  among  the  first  twenty  mod- 
ern American  novelists. 

1915 


[307] 


NOTES   ON   AMERICAN   POETS 


CRITICAL  NOTES  ON  AiMERICAN  POETS 

ON  opening  a  little  volume  "Poems  and  Ly- 
rics" by  George  Reston  Mallooh,  one  rec- 
ognizes that  our  young  English  poets  in- 
herit advantages  denied  their  American  brothers. 
The  English  literary  soil  has  been  fructified  by  the 
germs   of  poetic   associations   since   the   days   of 
Chaucer.     Indeed  not  only  were  the  Elizabethans 
inspired  by  the  riches  of  the  mediaeval  world  and 
the  Renaissance,  but  elements  of  the  rich  compost 
of  the  buried  civilizations  first  carried  into  Bri- 
tain by  the  invading  Celts,   Romans,  and  Teu- 
tonic tribes  reappear  in  the  literary  magic  of  the 
Shakespearian  drama.     "Macbeth"    aiid   "King 
Lear"  are  the  poetic  fruits  of  cycles  of  legends. 
And   to   read   our   contemporary  poets,    Hardy, 
Doughty,  Bridges,  Yeats,  Davies,  Flecker,  de  la 
Mare,  Hodgson,  Sturge  Moore,  Lawrence,  etc.,  is 
to  recognize  that  in  their  literary  blood  courses 
sap  from  these  ancient  English  roots  ramifying  in 
[3u] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

our  literary  soil.  Mr.  Malloch's  verses  are 
no  better,  line  for  line,  than  most  of  the  poems 
in  "The  Little  Book  of  Modern  (American) 
Verse,"  ^  edited  by  Miss  Rittenhouse,  but  one 
feels  that  many  of  the  latter  suffer  from  a  thin- 
ness of  literary  humus.  The  effect  of  the  ma- 
jority of  these  American  poets  of  a  decade  ago, 
as  also  that  of  the  Transition  poets  of  the  "six- 
ties," Stedman,  Aldrich,  etc.,  and  of  their  succes- 
sors. Gilder,  Cawein,  etc.,  refined,  sensitive  and 
conscientious  as  is  their  work,  is  too  much  that 
of  a  literary  dessert,  and  too  little  that  of 
the  meat  or  the  wine,  the  labour  or  the  joy  of 
life.  Such  work  is  an  ornamentation,  like  the  cut 
flowers  on  the  table.  One  feels  that  Miss  Ritten- 
house's  seventy  poets  have  not  so  much  created 
their  own  styles  as  that  they  have  selected  them 
from  imported  English  stock,  and  that  when  they 
mix  in  their  native  images  the  effect  is  incongru- 
ous, as  in  the  poem  "Lincoln"  by  Edwin  Mark- 
ham,  where  the  moral  grandiloquence  flowers  in 
rhetoric : — 

"Sprung  from  the  West, 
The  strength  of  virgin  forests  braced  his  mind, 
The   hush   of   spacious   prairies   stilled   his   soul. 
Up  from  log  cabin  to  the  Capitol, 
1  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.  1913. 

[312] 


NOTES   ON   AMERICAN    POETS 

One  fire  was  on  his  spirit,  one  resolve — 
To  send  the  keen  axe  to  the  root  of  wrong, 
Clearing  a  free  way  for  the  feet  of  God. 
And  evermore  he  burned  to  do  his  deed 
With  the  fine  stroke  and  gesture  of  a  king ; 
He  built  the  rail-pile  as  he  built  the  State,"  etc. 

It  is  surely  the  borrowed  or  adulterated  literary 
styles  of  the  vast  majority  of  American  poets,  con- 
temporary with  Whitman,  that  have  proved  fa- 
tal to  their  claims  in  the  eyes  of  this  generation  *? 
It  is  therefore  with  curiosity  we  turn  to  the  New 
Poetry,  to  the  renaissance  of  poetry  in  America  of 
which  Mr.  W.  S.  Braithwaite  is  a  learned  sponsor. 
His  Index  of  Poets,  of  Magazine  Poems  and  of 
Volumes  of  Poetry  published  in  America  in  1916, 
is  so  imposing  as  to  abash  a  foreign  critic  who 
feels  that  in  offering  here  a  few  remarks  he  neces- 
sarily remains  in  ignorance  of  verse  of  rarer  qual- 
ity than  he  has  been  privileged  to  examine. 
But  the  main  conclusion  he  draws  from  Mr. 
Braithwaite's  "Annual"  is  that  American  poetry  is 
in  a  vigorous  state.  Not  only  is  the  growth  of 
the  vine  luxuriant,  but  there  is  plenty  of  body  in 
the  new,  fermenting  wine,  though  of  fine  bou- 
quet, of  high  distinction  of  style  there  is,  as  yet, 
not  much  evidence.  One  must  not  ask  too  much 
at  once.  The  main  thing  is  that  the  poets  should 
[313] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

be  fortified  by  public  interest  in  the  movement 
and  that  the  standard  of  critical  taste  should  be 
raised.  From  a  few  magazine  articles  here  and 
there  one  gathers  that  the  reviewers  are  a  little 
too  busy  confounding  the  geese  with  the  swans, 
and  the  coteries  too  intent  on  crowning  their  own 
friends  with  laurels.  With  the  spirit  and  aims 
of  the  innovators  in  vers  libre  one  must  declare 
oneself  in  sympathy.  The  old  metrical  forms 
cannot  suffice  the  new  impulses,  and  there  must 
be  continuous  experiment,  if  a  disastrous  crystal- 
lization of  form  is  not  to  fetter  the  poets,  as  the 
bardic  poets  of  Ireland  were  fettered  by  their 
elaborate  school  craft  for  many  centuries.  But 
doubtful  taste  is  sure  to  parade  in  its  pretentious 
papier  mdche  mask.  Mr.  Ezra  Pound's  "Per- 
sonse"  ^  for  instance  is  a  specimen  of  false  poetic 
mosaic,  pseudo  mediaeval  tesserce  set  in  sticky 
modem  cement  that  can  never  harden.  Such 
stand  condemned  as  style,  by  their  adulterate 
jargon.  Some  reviewers  have  commended  Mr. 
Pound's  "freshness  of  inspiration,"  his  "im- 
mense vitality  and  passion,"  but  these  are 
precisely  the  qualities  nature  has  denied  him. 
His  "Canzoni"  ^  may  offer  us  technical  feats,  but 

1  Elkin  Matthews.     London.     1909. 
[314] 


NOTES   ON   AMERICAN   POETS 

are  they  not  bankrupt  in  feeling*?  Everything 
in  Mr.  Pound's  verse  appears  to  us  to  be  derived, 
or  imitated,  or  cut  out  of  old  patterns.  One  is 
told  however  that  he  is  at  his  best  in  translations 
from  the  Chinese. 

Mr.  Untermeyer,  on  the  other  hand,  is  rich  in 
feeling  but  poor  in  artistr}-.  Many  of  his  pieces 
in  "These  Times,"  -  as  "The  Swimmers,"  "On  the 
Palisade,"  "A  Side  Street"  one  reads  with  sym- 
pathy, applauding  the  truth  and  unconventional 
vigour  of  his  sensations  and  impressions;  but  even 
when  most  successful  he  needs  to  concentrate  and 
purify  his  verse  and  eliminate  the  dross  from  his 
metal.  In  "Thirteen  Portraits"  by  his  force  of 
feeling  he  gets  home  on  his  human  target  with  a 
satiric  sabre  edge,  and  in  "Lovers"  he  has  retold 
the  old  story  of  Love's  satiety  in  a  manner  all  his 
own.  His  ideas  are  bold,  but  he  is  too  apt  to 
philosophize  and  divagate,  and  mar  his  pictures 
with  hasty,  random  strokes  and  coarse  metaphors, 
as  in  his  poem  "To  a  Weeping  Willow,"  where 
he  speaks  thus  of  the  storm  wind : 

"You   laughed   a   welcome    to   that   savage   lout, 
I  heard  the  thunder  of  his  heavy  boots." 

1  Elkin  Matthews.     London  1911. 

2  Henry  Holt  and  Co.,  New  York,   1917. 

[315] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

Mr.  Untermeyer  shouts  over-loudly  of  his  un- 
conquerable optimism,  of  his  unquenchable  faith 
in  life.  Is  this  a  genuine  temperamental  trait  ^ 
or  is  it  that  he  needs  must  echo  the  popular  Ameri- 
can creed,  and  its  "red-blood"  gospel?  Walt 
Whitman  shouted  too,  but  his  giant  lungs  could 
carry  over  prairie  and  savannah  to  far  continents. 
But  is  not  Mr.  Untermeyer  shouting  at  the  crowd 
from  his  literary  window'?  In  "The  Poet"  he 
describes  aptly  enough  the  qualifications  of  the 
true  poet,  concluding: — 

"His  soul  is  but  a  fragile  glass 

Revealing  what  his  age  has  been, 
But  it  shall  live,  though  all  else  pass 
For  all  of  Time  is  seen  therein." 

A  fine  illustration  of  the  truth  of  the  above 
stanza  is  offered  us  in  a  little  booklet,  "Chinese 
Poems"  (Privately  Printed,  London  1916);  and 
from  a  score  of  exquisite  little  cameos  I  select  one 
by  a  poet  of  the  Pre  T'ang  period,  to  compare  with 
Mr.  Untermeyer's  method: — 

A  Pre  T'ang  Poet 

"Yellow  dusk ;  messenger  fails  to  appear, 
Restraining  anger,  heart  sick   and  sad. 
Turn  candle  towards  bed-foot; 
Averting  face — sob  in  darkness." 

[316] 


NOTES   ON   AMERICAN   POETS 

From  Mr.  Untermeyer's  "Truce"  a  description, 
in  seventy  lines,  of  two  lovers,  clinging  together 
in  the  dusk  of  a  winter's  evening  while  watching 
from  a  city  window  the  falling  snow,  we  take  the 
following  lines: — 

"And  as  she  smiled  and  snuggled  closer  there 

The  dusk  crept  up  and  flowed  into  the  room 
Softly,  with  reverent  hand,  it  touched  her  hair. 

That  like  a  soft  brown  flower  seemed  to  bloom 

In  the  deep-lilac  gloom 

Kindly  it  came 
And  laid  its  blurring  fingers  on  the  sharp  edges  of  things 

On  books  and  chairs  and  figured  coverings, 

And  all  at  once  delicately  wrought. 

Then  almost  hastily 
As  though  with  a  last  merciful  thought 

It  co:ered  with   its  hand,   the  sharp,  white  square 

That  stood  out  in  the  corner  where 

The  evening  paper  had  been  flung." — etc. 

Note  how  the  cheap,  sentimental  images  we 
have  italicized  clash  and  jar.  Whereas  the  Pre 
T'ang  poet's  picture  by  its  simple  veracity  of  feel- 
ing will  endure  to  the  end,  Mr.  Untermeyer  by 
smothering  the  essentials  and  emphasizing  what 
is  superfluous  has  so  weighed  down  his  craft  with 
heavy  stocks  and  stones  that  it  has  already  sunk  to 
the  bottom  of  "Time's  Stream."  Thus  the  "New 
Poetry,"   however   "progressive"   its   practitioner 

[317] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

may  claim  to  be,  is  not  necessarily  in  advance  of 
the  art  of  sixty  generations  back ! 

The  test  for  American  poetry,  today,  is  of 
course,  simply  the  old  two-fold  test — how  does 
your  vision  enrich  our  consciousness  of  man's  life 
and  nature's  life?  and  what  original  effects  of 
force  and  beauty  in  language  does  it  communi- 
cate? When  one  turns  to  Mr.  Edward  Lee  Mas- 
ters' "The  Great  Valley"  ^  one  asks  oneself — 
does  one  read  it  solely  for  the  psychological  in- 
terest of  its  human  drama?  Not  entirely.  For 
his  poems,  "Gobineau  to  Tree,"  "Autochton," 
"Hanging  the  Picture,"  "Lincoln  and  Douglas 
Debates,"  highly  original  in  their  psycholog- 
ical insight,  are  more  native,  more  individual 
in  style  than  Mr.  Markham's  "Lincoln,"  quoted 
above.  But  still  is  not  Mr.  Masters  growing 
in  danger  of  becoming  a  little  too  fluent,  too 
careless?  In  "Spoon  River  Antholog)^"  he 
struck  out  a  form  of  psychological  epitaph 
which,  in  grim  terseness  and  pregnant  irony 
of  phrasing,  rises  superior  to  much  bald,  at- 
mospheric ugliness.  What  did  his  vision  ac- 
complish for  us?     His  acute  insight  cut  through 

^The  Macmillan  Co.,   1917. 

[318] 


NOTES   ON   AMERICAN    POETS 

the  dead  flesh  of  sham  morality  and  conventional 
ideals,  probing  the  living  impulses  and  hidden 
passions  of  a  typical  community  of  citizens.  He 
pierced  the  joints  of  the  annoured  mail  of  Phari- 
saism with  its  encrusted  materialism,  greed,  self- 
complacency;  and  he  cast  the  tragi-comedy  of  the 
life  stories  of  hundreds  of  men  and  M^omen  in  the 
bronze  of  his  psychological  epitaphs.  This  v^^as 
a  great  achievement,  and  his  exposure  of  the  iron- 
ical shams-  of  life,  flaunting  in  the  headlines  and 
glozed  by  the  tombstones,  will  live  in  "Spoon 
River  Anthology^/'  not  only  by  his  faith  in  truth 
and  all  that  is  humanly  fine,  but  by  the  force  of 
his  caustic,  naked  phraseology.  The  same  insight, 
and  the  same  generous  humanity  inspire  "The 
Deep  Valley"  indeed  in  widening  circles  of  vision, 
but  the  /orw,  more  prolix  in  narrative  and  reflec- 
tion, has  not  the  same  finality.  "The  passion  and 
colour  and  grave  music"  which  Mr.  W.  M.  Reedy 
finds  in  it,  do  they  find  worthy  form?  Read 
"Cato  Barden,"  an  admirable  sketch  of  a  life's 
failure,  and  count  how  many  of  the  lines  are  tedi- 
ous, unnecessary.     For  example: — 

"He  had  in  short  a  nature  fit  to  work 
With  great  capacity ;  had  he  combined 

[319] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

An  intellect  but  half  his  nature's  worth 

He  might  have  won  the  race.     But  many  thought 

He  promised  much,  his  father  most  of  all 

Because  he  had  these  virtues,  and  in  truth 

Before  his  leaves  unfolded  with  the  spring 

His  mind  seemed  apt,  perhaps  seemed  measured  full 

Of  quality,  the  prizes  he  had  won 

At  Valparaiso  pointed  to  the  fruit 

He  would  produce  at  last." 

Not  a  line  of  these  eleven  is  worth  preserving. 
Read  the  hundred  lines  of  "Steam  Shovel  Art,"  a 
conte  to  please  any  lawyer,  or  the  hundred  and 
thirty  lines  of  "New  Year's  Day,"  and  consider 
whether  these  narratives  would  not  be  far  more 
effective  in  prose.  The  psychological  analysis  in 
"The  typical  American"  is  as  piercing  as  ever,  but 
the  art  is  too  didactic,  the  metaphors  too  unchas- 
tened,  for  the  piece  to  rank  as  fine  poetry.  And 
"The  Last  Confession,"  "Marsyas,"  "The  Des- 
plaines  Forest,"  "Apollo  at  Pheraea,"  "The  Apol- 
ogy of  Demetrius,"  "The  Radical's  Message," 
and  various  other  pieces  fall  to  a  place  that  lies 
between  poetry  and  prose.  Most  grateful  as  one 
is  for  "The  Great  Valley,"  for  the  wit  and  truth 
of  its  varied  human  drama,  one  feels  that  the 
form,  generally,  is  scarcely  worthy  of  the  author's 
penetrating  spiritual  vision. 


NOTES   ON    AMERICAN    POETS 

Has  not  the  delicate  voice  of  Mr.  Frost's  muse 
lost  something  of  its  timbre  in  ''Mountain  Inter- 
val"? Everyone  knows  that  in  a  stretch  of 
country  there  are  certain  fields,  woods,  meadows, 
which  subtly  allure  one  to  return  again  and  again 
to  them  in  preference  to  others.  The  contours 
of  the  ground,  the  way  trees  break  the  skyline,  the 
shape  of  a  field,  the  curve  of  a  road  or  a  lane  are 
elating  or  comforting,  whereas  neighbouring  fields 
and  copses  seem  uninspiring  in  comparison.  Well, 
"Mountain  Interval,"  this  stretch  of  new  country, 
leaves  me  comparatively  unresponsive.  Is  there 
not  some  flatness  in  the  cadence  of  the  rhythms, 
in  the  character  of  the  verse;  and  less  of,  well, 
one  must  use  the  old  word,  beauty,  in  spirit  or  in 
mood?  It  occurs  to  one  that  possibly  Mr.  Frost 
has  evolved  a  new  theory  of  verse,  or,  perhaps, 
that  he  has  wed  his  old  practice  to  some  new 
method.  Does  he  hold  that  one  subject  is  as  de- 
sirable, one  word  as  beautiful  as  another?  But 
"Mountain  Interval"  shows  that  they  are  not. 
Though  there  are  interesting  poems  in  the  book, 
as  "Snow,"  "Hyla  Brook,"  "The  Line  Gang," 
this  admirer  of  "North  of  Boston"  feels  as 
though  a  hard  grey  sky  had  succeeded  the  soft 
light  and  rolling  clouds  of  a  South-West  wind. 
But  nothing  is  so  inconstant  as  weather :  it  breaks, 
[321] 


FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

and  sun,  wind  and  sky  vviil  restore  speedily  the 
charm  of  Mr.  Frost's  landscape. 

In  "Men,  Women  and  Ghosts,"  '  Amy  Lowell 
supplies  those  very  factors  of  fresh,  sensuous  im- 
agery and  emotional  zest  of  which  we  note  the 
comparative  absence  in  American  poetry  of  the 
previous  decade.  Miss  Lowell  has  undoubtedly 
reinforced  her  agile  aesthetic  instinct  by  a  crafts- 
man's care.  Her  choice  of  subjects  and  her  way 
of  approach  show  a  culture  truly  cosmopolitan. 
There  is  little  she  cannot  do  in  the  genres  she  has 
chosen,  when  she  puts  her  mind  to  it.  Has  she 
not  drawn  admirable  inspiration  from  Keats  in 
"Pickthorn  Manor,"  and  from  Byron  in  "The 
Cremona  Violin'"?  Note  how  near,  both  in  spirit 
and  method,  is  the  clever  "The  Hammers"  to 
"The  Ingoldsby  Legends."  In  psychological 
sureness  in  "The  Overgrown  Pasture"  as  in  "Fig- 
ures in  old  Saxe"  Miss  Lowell's  insight  is  not  to 
be  criticized.  She  has  the  light  touch,  is  shrewd 
and  amusing  in  observation,  and  is  fertile  in  in- 
ventiveness. Brilliant  is  the  term  for  "Men, 
Women  and  Ghosts,"  praise  which  holds  good 
when  the  book  is  put  to  the  test  of  a  second  read- 
ing. Her  curious  attempts  to  render  the  rhythms 
of  music,  as  Scriabin's,  in  verse  are  indeed  no  nov- 

1  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1916. 

[322] 


NOTES   ON    AMERICAN    POETS 

elty.  It  has  been  done  long  ago,  perhaps  more 
successfully,  by  Spanish  poets  not  of  high  stature. 
Where  are  we  to  place  Miss  Amy  Lowell '?  What 
gives  one  pause  is  her  very  versatility.  She  re- 
calls a  virtuoso  whose  renderings  of  Chopin  or 
Scarlatti  are  equally  accomplished.  Has  she  a 
spiritual  atmosphere  and  temperamental  colours 
of  her  own?  Perhaps  we  taste  her  individual 
quality  best  in  "The  Dinner  Party"  and  "The 
Aquarium"  which  open  new  vistas  in  the  New 
Poetry,  of  finer  import  than  does  her  prose  poem 
"Malmaison"  or  her  vers  llbre  "The  Trumpet- 
Vine  Arbour"  and  "The  City  of  Falling  Leaves." 
Miss  Lowell  is  too  clever  not  to  have  observed 
that  with  each  re-reading  of  the  three  last-men- 
tioned pieces  the  picture  seems  to  dull,  to  grow 
rigid  and  stereotyped.  This  must  give  her  pause. 
For  the  highest  aim  of  poetry  is  to  indicate  the 
flux,  the  growth,  the  mystery  of  nature  by  the  art 
of  the  concrete  image.  The  greater  a  piece  of 
literary  art  the  more  inexhaustible  is  it  in  suggest- 
ing the  springs  and  forces  of  life.  The  sharp 
limitation  of  "Decorative"  poetry,  and  of  such 
experiments  in  "polyphonic  prose"  as  "Red 
Slippers,"  "Thompson's  Lunch  Room,"  "An 
Opera  House"  etc.,  is  that  the  poet  in  striving  to 
convey  to  us  the  cunning  appearance  of  things  se- 
[323] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

cures  surface  at  the  expense  of  depth — and  the 
result  is  sesthetic  superficiality.  For  this  reason 
the  psychological  pieces  "The  Cremona  Violin," 
"The  Overgrown  Pasture,"  "The  Dinner  Party" 
etc.,  can  be  read  and  re-read  with  pleasure  when 
"Malmaison,"  "Red  Slippers"  etc.,  simply  tire  us 
by  their  almost  mechanical  rigidity  and  spiritual 
poverty.  And  there  is  something  wrong  with  an 
artistic  method,  surely,  that  leaves  nothing  to  the 
imagination?  The  Chinese  masters  did  not  fall 
into  this  trap  of  mere  cleverness.  Miss  Lowell 
in  her  amusing,  light,  bright  "A  Roxbury  Gar- 
den" takes  370  short  lines  in  her  effort  to  give 
"the  circular  movement  of  a  hoop  bowling  along 
the  ground,  and  the  up  and  down  elliptical  curve 
of  a  flying  shuttlecock."  Whereas  a  Chinese 
poet,  of  the  Pre  T'ang  epoch  concentrates  for  us 
a  marital  drama,  communicating  both  the  essence 
and  whole  movement  of  a  situation  in  seven 
lines : — 

The  Ejected  Wife 

Entering  the  Hall,  she  meets  the  new  wife. 
Leaving  the  gate  she  runs  into  former  husband. 
Words  stick;  she  does  not  manage  to  say  anything; 
Presses    hands   together ;    stands    hesitating, 
Agitates    moon-like    fan,    sheds    pearl-like    tears, 

[324] 


NOTES   OX    AMERICAN    POETS 

Realizes  she  loves  him,  as  much  as  ever — 
Present  pain  never  comes  to  an  end. 

Now  here  is  a  model  which  our  Imagists  would 
do  well  to  study.  It  follows  the  laws  laid  down 
in  "Some  Imagist  Poets.  An  Anthology,"  ^  with 
one  important  exception,  viz.:  "Law  5.  To  pro- 
duce poetry  that  is  hard  and  clear,  never  blurred 
nor  indehnite."  "The  Ejected  Wife"  is  not  Itard 
but  soft!  soft  as  growing  nature,  as  the  emotion 
of  love.  Luckily  neither  Mr.  Aldington,  Mr. 
Flint,  Mr.  D.  H.  Lawrence  nor  Miss  Amy  Lowell 
herself  lives  up  to  this  theory  of  poetry  hard  and 
clear.  How  can  they'?  They  would  forswear 
the  genius  of  this  English  language  if  they  did, 
and  indeed  are  not  the  Imagists  apt  to  go  too  far, 
in  that  direction? 

Within  the  limits  of  his  soundings  of  neurotic 
impulses  and  morbid  moods,  Mr.  Conrad  Aiken 
would  seem  to  have  succeeded  admirably  in  his 
aim  of  weaving  strange  dream  moods  and  emo- 
tional obsessions  into  rythmical  patterns  of  ebb 
and  flow  and  recurring  flux.  Psychologically 
"The  Jig  of  Forslin"  ^  is  highly  interesting.  It 
re-reproduces  with  equal  dexterity  and  sincerity, 
in  rich  variation,  the  amoral  impulses  and  desires 

1  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.,  Boston,  1915. 

[3^5] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

of  adolescence  when  fevered  emotion  and  thought 
leap  up  divorced  from  moral  "controls."  By 
steeping  Froslin's  dream  moods  and  imaginary 
actions  in  the  atmosphere  of  the  operatic  and 
music-hall  footlights,  and  passing  abruptly  from 
this  artificial  stimulation  of  the  passions  into  the 
hard  lights  and  sinister  shadows  of  night  streets 
and  pavements,  the  author  escapes  the  dicta  of  the 
moral  censors  which  have  no  jurisdiction  in  the 
plane  of  music,  enervating,  luring,  thrilling,  dis- 
cordant. The  verse  is  subtly  rich  in  tone  effects 
and  in  inner  rhythms,  and  Mr.  Aiken,  accom- 
plished in  his  artistry,  by  his  sharp  critical  sense 
preserves  his  equilibrium,  and  does  not  allow  the 
riot  of  neurotic  impulses  to  damage  his  perspec- 
tive. "The  Jig  of  Forslin"  is  indeed  an  original 
achievement,  one  valuable  by  its  creator's  sincer- 
ity, though  it  is  impossible  to  say  how  much  it 
may  appeal  to  civilizations  less  artificial  than 
that  which  has  generated  it. 

No  less  interesting,  indeed  more  remarkable  by 
its  curious  experiments  in  a  new  technique  is 
"Goblins  and  Pagodas."  '  Mr.  J.  G.  Fletcher's 
practice  raises  all  the  most  perplexing  questions 
together!  Does  he  attain  his  ends  in  his  "sym- 
phonies"   by   the    "spirals"    and    subtle   musical 

1  Houghton,  Mifflin  Co.,  Boston   1916. 

[326] 


NOTES   ON    AMERICAN    POETS 

curves  of  his  vers  Ubre?  His  is  the  allusive 
method,  and  often  one  loses  the  trail  and  becomes 
irritated  by  his  vague,  windy  transitions,  by  the 
clouds  of  coloured  verbal  reflections  that  he  flings 
lavishly  on  the  page  to  convey  his  vibrating 
sensations  and  to  create  his  atmosphere.  If  we 
wait  patiently  and  watch  these  verbal  rockets 
soaring  and  their  trailing  down,  something  beauti- 
ful will  emerge.  As  an  example  note  how  his 
"Golden  Sympathy"  hovers  and  flickers  for  the 
first  seventy  lines,  like  a  lantern  slide  that  cannot 
be  got  fairly  on  the  screen,  and  lo  I  a  fine,  intensely 
imaginative  effect  breaks  upon  us  with  the  line, 

"The  \'illage  drowses  in  the  darkness." 

Again  note  in  "The  Red  Symphony"  how  his 
realistic  images  of  a  ship  battering  her  way  to 
port  through  an  icy  gale  are  reinforced  and  trans- 
cended by  his  recurring  sensations  of  a  city,  seen 
on  the  skyline,  through  the  stormy  sunset,  given 
to  the  flames.  In  "Poppies  of  the  Red  Year" 
Mr.  Fletcher's  imagination  shows  rare  creative  in- 
tensity, in  the  vision  of  the  European  towns  and 
fields,  delivered  over  to  devastation  and  death  and 
War's  anarchy.  One  must  salute  such  achieve- 
ments. The  criticism  however,  of  the  method, 
generally,  is  that  it  is  prodigal  of  eccentricities  and 

[327] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

too  impaired  by  affectations.  Will  a  future  gen- 
eration style  his  method  self-destructive  through 
lack  of  concentration,  grace  and  directness  of  ap- 
peal *?  It  certainly  exacts  much  patient  attention 
from  the  reader,  and  here  again  the  best  Chinese 
example  is  worthy  of  Mr.  Fletcher's  study.  His 
recondite  exposition  in  his  Preface,  of  his  techni- 
cal procedure,  which  he  identifies  on  Professor 
Fenollosa's  authority  with  the  practice  of  the  poets 
of  the  Sung  dynasty,  need  not  be  taken  too 
seriously. 

The  charge  of  adulterated  imagery  can  certainly 
not  be  brought  against  Mr.  Edwin  Arlington  Rob- 
inson's "The  Man  Against  the  Sky."  ^  Here  we 
meet  a  technique  accomplished  in  its  ease  and 
certainty,  indubitable  psychological  insight,  a  se- 
quence of  ideas  and  images  that  flow  with  the 
smoothness  of  a  brimming  river — and  yet,  withal, 
an  effect  is  produced  of  a  narrative  whose  impli- 
cations cannot  be  grasped  in  their  entirety.  Was 
there  not  less  of  mechanism  and  more  of  artistic 
chiselling  in  Mr.  Robinson's  earlier  manner'?  for 
example  in  the  poems  "Lincoln,"  "Calverly's," 
"Miniver  Cheevy"  given  by  Miss  Rippenhouse'? 
Though  we  follow  easily  enough  poems  such  as 
"Eros  Turannos,"   "The  Unforgiven,"   "Bewick 

1  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York,  1916. 

[328] 


NOTES   ON    AMERICAN    POETS 

Finger,"  we  confess  we  are  puzzled  by  the  intellec- 
tualized  imagery  of  "The  Man  Against  the  Sky." 
We  find  no  centre  in  the  composition.  The  fault 
may  lie  in  our  lack  of  sympathy  with  the  highly 
intellectual  appeal  of  Mr.  Robinson's  poetry, 
but  our  criticism,  put  shortly,  is  that  his  thought 
and  imagery  fall  into  over  symmetrical  patterns, 
and  that  the  attention  is  fatigued  thereby,  almost 
as  though  indeed  one  had  been  gazing  through 
a  kaleidoscope.  Has  not  Mr.  Robinson's  polished 
manner  stiffened,  unconsciously  into  a  mannerism 
that  binds  too  inflexibly  his  emotion  and  thought'? 
The  genuineness  of  Sara  Teasdale's  simple 
lyrics  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  we  become  infec- 
ted by  and  share  the  emotions  she  communicates  in 
"Rivers  of  the  Sea."  ^  Her  form  seems  to  be 
born  of  her  feeling.  Her  phrasing  though 
marked  by  no  particular  individuality,  is  hap- 
pily adequate  to  reflect  the  light  that  flushes 
a  woman's  vision  of  the  world,  when  she  gains 
and  loses  love.  By  the  spontaneity  of  Miss 
Teasdale's  poetic  achievement  we  may  measure 
the  more  ambitious  appeal  of  Mr.  Neihardt's 
"The  Quest"  where  both  imagery  and  language 
are  in  a  sense  too  "literary"  to  create  a  fresh 
poetic    atmosphere.      This    we     think    is     true 

1  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York,  1916. 
[329] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

even  of  Mr.  Neihardt's  best  poems,  such  as 
the  vigorous  "Nuptial  Song."  And  if  wt  are  a 
little  churlish  to  "The  Quest"  shall  we  not  show 
ourselves  also  irresponsive  to  the  indubitable 
claims  of  Josephine  Preston  Peabody's  "Harvest 
Moon"'?  The  title  poem  indeed  moves  us  by  its 
sincerity,  and  in  it  and  in  some  others  as  "The 
Neighbours,"  the  authoress  tempers  her  high  as- 
pirations for  the  "Life  that  Might  Be"  with  a 
true  vision  of  the  lacerating  irony  innate  in  War's 
brutal  fact.  Perhaps  the  authoress's  song  soars 
a  little  too  high  into  the  poetic  ether,  in  days  when 
the  women  of  fifteen  embattled  nations  have  abet- 
ted whatever  their  men  children  have  done,  the 
slaying  and  the  slain.  Even  in  "The  Poems  of 
Alan  Seegar,"  it  is  perhaps  less  the  noble  exalta- 
tion of  such  pieces  ^  as  "The  Aisne"  and  "Cham- 
pagne 1914-1916"  that  will  give  the  dead  poet  his 
place  in  American  Anthologies  than  the  fact  that 
they  combined  the  spirit  of  one  who  for  faith 
and  honour's  sake  endured  two  years  of  self-im- 
posed hardship  and  danger  on  the  Battlefields 
of  France — 1914-1916.  Lack  of  space  forbids 
the  discussion  here  of  the  significant  spectacle  of 
many  hundreds  of  new  poets  first  finding  voice  in 
the  actual  shock  of  war.     The  American  reader 

■'■  Constable,   London,   1917- 

[330] 


NOTES   ON   AMERICAN    POETS 

who  desires  to  follow  the  contemporary  movement 
in  British  poetry,  should  procure  "An  Annual  of 
New  Poetry."  ^  Perhaps  the  most  interesting 
contributions  to  this  volume  are  those  by  Edward 
Eastaway  (Edward  Thomas)  whose  poetic  im- 
pulse was  stimulated  by  the  example  of  Robert 
Frost.  Alas  I  Edward  Thomas  whose  sensitive 
Celtic  vision  of  the  magic  of  the  English  country- 
side is  an  abiding  example  of  the  riches  of  our 
])oets'  inheritance,  now^  lies  dead  on  a  French  bat- 
tlefield. As  a  specimen  of  Thomas's  intense  com- 
munion with  nature  let  us  quote  this  exquisite  lit- 
tle lyric — for  the  consideration  of  American 
j^oets : 

All  day  the  air  triumphs  with  its  two  voices  of  wind 

and  rain : 
As  loud  as  if  in  anger  it  rejoices, 
Drowning  the  sound  of  earth 
That  gulps  and  gulps  in  choked  endeavor  vain 
To  swallow  the  rain. 

Half  the  night  too,  only  the  wild  air  speaks 
With  wind  and  rain 

Till  forth  the  dumb  source  of  the  river  breaks 
And  drowns  the   rain  and  wind 
Bellows  like  a  giant  bathing  in  mighty  mirth 
The  triumph  of  earth.  IQl? 

^Houghton,  Mifflin  Co.,  1916. 

[331] 


I 


TWO    AMERICAN     NOVELISTS 


A  NOTE  ON  TWO  AMERICAN 
NOVELISTS 

JOSEPH  HERGESHEIMER  AND 
SHERWOOD  ANDERSON 

I 

WHAT  a  relief  to  find  oneself  swimming 
again  in  deep  water,  borne  buoyantly 
along  by  the  full  running  tide  of  "The 
Three  Black  Pennys."  Here  were  those  aes- 
thetic qualities  flooding-in  that  American  fiction 
is  always  nervously  exorcising,  the  qualities 
■ostracized  for  at  least  a  generation.  What  a  sur- 
prise to  find  again  an  American  novelist  who  in 
feeling,  atmosphere,  artistry  was  abreast  of  the 
great  European  tradition.  For  since  the  death 
of  Stephen  Crane  the  American  practice  in  fic- 
tion had  appeared  to  be  "standardizing"  itself, 
to  be  reaching  out  to  the  machine-made  pattern 
of  the  gas  bracket  or  the  parlour  fittings.  There 
were  exceptions  of  course,  but  how  few  Amer- 
ican novels  were  not  run  into  popular  market 
moulds  and  cast  like  a  glazed  drainpipe  I  The 
prepossessions  and  standards  of  taste  of  the  mass 

[335] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

of  the  respectable  citizens  of  the  United  States 
were  forming  the  bones  and  flesh  of  the  novel 
in  their  own  image.  The  American  novel  had 
long  been  lacking  in  beauty  of  sensuous  appre- 
hension, in  emotional  freedom,  in  artistic  im- 
agery. One  knew  of  course  the  reasons  given  for 
this  semi-inhibition  of  art,  of  gracious  colour, 
of  psychological  originality.  One  had  been  told 
that  the  strenuous  American  pioneer  had  had 
little  time  and  less  thought  for  beauty  and  that 
puritanism  and  utilitarianism  had  combined  "to 
lay  preponderant  emphasis  upon  morals."^ 
Just  as  in  State  after  State  the  American  land- 
scape had  yielded  up  its  native  charm  to  the  ax 
and  the  saw  and  the  shovel,  and  had  been  tamed 
and  scarified  out  of  knowledge,  so  human  medi- 
ocrity had  stamped  its  distressing  features  every- 
where. Moral  energy  and  the  love  of  the  dollar 
characteristically  between  them  had  cut  the 
throat  of  artistic  charm.  So  we  were  told. 
And  of  the  six  American  writers,  Cooper,  Poe, 
Hawthorne,  Thoreau,  Herman  Melville,  Whit- 
man, who  showed  most  originality,  sensuous  en- 
dowment or  temperamental  artistry,  four  had 
been  derided,  banned,  or  cold-shouldered  by  their 

1  "A    History    of    American    Literature."     By    W.    P.    Trent. 
Page  375- 

[336] 


TWO    AMERICAN     NOVELISTS 

grateful  nation.  But  here  was  Mr.  Herge- 
sheimer  with  "The  Three  Black  Pennys"  break- 
ing all  the  furtive  puritanic  taboos  against 
esthetic  beauty,  sensuous  charm  and  psycholog- 
ical depth.  One  rubbed  one's  eyes.  One  mar- 
velled. Could  Philadelphia  have  nurtured  this 
cunning  sesthetic  instinct  for  visualization,  for 
form  and  colour,  this  craftsmanship  so  sure  of 
itself,  so  delicately  bold  and  free,  this  psycholog- 
ical instinct  so  just  and  satisfying^  And  why 
not  Philadelphia?  Had  not  Richmond  nurtured 
Poe?  Salem,  Hawthorne'?  Long  Island,  Whit- 
nian'?  and  Newark,  Stephen  Crane?  Why 
should  not  Philadelphia  give  birth  to  an  artist  of 
rank  also?  It  had.  Mr.  Hergesheimer's 
achievement  in  "The  Three  Black  Pennys"  was 
not  the  less  interesting  because  he  had  evidently 
applied  both  a  cosmopolitan  outlook  and  a  tech- 
nique fortified  by  the  study  of  European  masters 
to  conjure  up  this  complex  image  of  the  life  of 
his  three  American  generations,  1730,  1840, 
1910.  An  exacting  task!  to  set  down  sharply 
and  finely  the  social  lineaments,  physical  and 
spiritual,  of  vanished  generations,  and  merge 
them  finally  in  the  roar  of  our  insatiable  epoch. 
His  feat  of  visualization  seemed  none  the  less 
interesting  when  one  learned  that  the  author  had 

[337] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

indeed  trained  his  eye  and  hand  to  practise  in 
another  art.  The  vision  of  two  of  the  societies 
of  the  past  he  had  conjured  up,  recreated  by  his 
imagination  from  dusty  piles  of  documents,  from 
diaries  and  the  faded  contents  of  garrets,  was 
a  rich  one  and  was  saturated  with  his  artistic 
qualities.  He  had  individualized  his  subject  by 
a  manner  truly  original.  What  would  Boston 
say^ 

It  came  as  a  shock  delayed,  when,  two  years 
later,  after  the  appearance  of  "Java  Head"  and 
"Gold  and  Iron"  in  1919,  Boston  in  the  person 
of  the  accomplished  editor  of  the  most  famous 
of  American  magazines,  made  a  cryptic  response 
to  a  suggested  paper  by  this  English  critic,  say- 
ing:— "Hergesheimer  is  an  exotic,  and  I  doubt 
whether  he  strikes  root."  An  exotic!  And  yet 
one  was  told  that  Mr.  Hergesheimer  was  a  Phil- 
adelphian,  the  descendent  of  a  long  line  of  Phil- 
adelphians.  Clearly  the  old  puritanic  inhibi- 
tions against  the  witchery  of  art,  the  old  fear  of 
sensuous  grace  and  the  sin  of  originality  were 
still  working  in  the  Bostonian  marrow.  It  was 
amusing  to  reflect  that  the  ban  did  not  fall  on 
that  great  class  of  artistes  who  minister  to  the 
luxury  of  the  rich  American  and  his  wife,  not 
on  the  opera  singers  and  impresarios,   the  con- 

[338] 


TWO    AMERICAN     NOVELISTS 

ductors  and  ballet  dancers,  the  violinists  and 
actors,  the  great  chefs  who  prepare  his  food  and 
the  costumiers  and  milliners  and  jewellers  who 
decorate  the  bodies  of  his  women,  no  I  for  such 
"exotics"  command  their  price,  and  "take  root" 
and  flourish  in  New  York;  but  the  ban  was  sus- 
pended, so  to  say,  over  the  head  of  one  who 
dealt  with  beauty  in  the  highest  sphere,  spirit- 
ually, emotionally,  aesthetically.  Such  an  artist,  a 
literary  artist,  had  but  a  doubtful  market  price  in 
New  York,  and  his  wares  could  not  be  "guaran- 
teed" by  the  Bostonian  footrule.  He  did  not 
"strike  root"  either  in  Washington  or  Oiautauqua. 
He  was  a  doubtful  temperamental  force,  not 
hall-marked  by  professors  or  sanctified  by  public 
demand,  and  even  as  Poe,  as  Thoreau,  as  Whit- 
man, as  Crane,  each  in  his  day,  his  stone  was 
not  to  be  builded  into  the  Bostonian  Tabernacle. 
So  that  paper  on  Mr.  Hergesheimer,  suggested  in 
1920,  was  not  written. 

One  must  not  dot  the  /.  Naturally  the  success 
of  "The  Three  Black  Pennys"  in  the  best  criti- 
cal quarters  was  complete  and  unequivocal? 
Naturally  all  who  can  recognize  the  quality  of 
rare  imagination  and  rare  technique  grouped 
themselves  at  once  to  salute  his  pennon.  No 
doubt  Boston  too,  swaying  delicately  and  balan- 
[339] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

cing  itself  between  two  desires,  not  to  be  too 
early  or  too  late  in  the  field  of  recognition  has 
since  come  gracefully  forward  with  murmured 
apologies.  One  knows  how  difficult  it  is  for 
editors  to  march  in  the  van  and  also  with  the 
main  body  of  their  supporters.  And  one  cannot 
be  too  careful  about  admitting  new  "exotics"  into 
the  herbarium  of  American  culture.  But  the 
word  "exotic"  applied  to  Mr.  Hergesheimer's  art, 
reveals  indeed  the  formidable  "complex"  in  the 
American  consciousness,  which  is  one  of  the 
causes  of  the  aesthetic  starvation  of  the  Ameri- 
can people. 

It  is  not  my  intention  here  to  do  more  than 
note  Mr.  Hergesheimer's  achievement  in  "Java 
Head."  The  indubitable  powers  of  imagina- 
tion and  of  untiring  research  that  have  enabled 
him  to  create  through  the  eyes  of  a  dead  and 
gone  generation  of  American  master  mariners  a: 
mirage  of  the  ancient  life  of  the  port  of  Salem, 
a  bundled  years  ago,  lies,  perhaps,  open  to  some 
criticisms  from  sailors  themselves?  It  may  be 
so.  But  of  the  cunning  beauty  and  draughts- 
manship of  the  picture  there  can  be  no  question. 
It  is  a  book  for  a  literary  connoisseur.  The  story 
of  the  intrusion  of  the  Manchu  lady,  Taou  Yuen 
into  the  chaste,  hard  bosom  of  Salem  society,  and 

[340] 


TWO     AMERICAN     N  O  \'  E  L  I  S  T  S 

of  the  clash  of  two  cultures,  one  very  old  and 
one  youthful  and  raw,  shows  an  uncanny  wiz- 
ardry which  must,  one  imagines,  have  deepened 
Bostonian  apprehension.  For  old  Salem  to  go 
to  the  East  meant  profit  in  trade  and  in  dollars, 
but  to  bring  an  Eastern  woman  into  Salem  itself 
seemed  a  singular  proceeding.  "Java  Head" 
indeed  "lays  no  preponderant  emphasis  upon 
morals,"  in  Mr.  Trent's  words,  and,  again,  its 
only  profit  for  us  is  beauty,  sensuous  and  spirit- 
ual. Like  Whistler's  painting,  "The  Blue 
Wave"  the  virtuosity  of  "Java  Head"  seems  to 
us  beyond  criticism.  One  can  only  indeed  crit- 
icize Mr.  Hergesheimer's  tendency  to  crowd  his 
picture,  which  leads  towards  the  close  to  a  sac- 
rifice of  grace  of  line  in  the  composition.  So 
rich  in  chiaroscuro  is  the  aesthetic  scheme  that 
one  has  to  search  long  among  the  historical 
novelists  to  find  a  similiar  achievement.  And 
the  reader  who  wishes  to  "place"  "Java  Head," 
to  see  where  the  novelist  holds  his  own  with  a 
classic  and  where  he  falls  short,  must  turn  to 
Jacobsen's  "Marie  Grubbe,"  a  masterpiece  finer  in 
its  jEsthetic  colouring,  in  its  perfection  of  subtle 
simplicity. 

[341] 


II 

Mr.  Sherwood  Anderson's  fine  achievement  in 
"Poor  White"  is  a  great  advance  as  serious  art, 
on  his  three  former  books.  In  reading  "Windy 
Macpherson's  Son"  and  "Marching  Men"  one 
wondered  whether  the  author  would  ever  attain 
to  a  sense  of  perspective,  whether  he  would  ever 
get  clear  of  his  seas  of  human  material,  so  to 
say,  and  not  let  the  details  smother  the  whole. 
In  "Winesburg,  Ohio"  one  felt  that,  at  last,  the 
behaviour  of  the  American  shirt  front  and  cambric 
blouse  so  long  offered  us  by  novelists  as  a  substi- 
tute for  the  hearts  they  cover,  was  out  of  his  pic- 
ture. At  least  these  people  of  Winesburg  were 
simply  human,  and  were  not  repeating  like  human 
clockwork  the  catchwords  of  the  good  American's 
creed, — catchwords,  moral,  idealistic,  ethical,  and 
practical.  Mr.  Anderson  was  evidently  educat- 
ing himself  in  his  art,  and  was  breaking  the 
twelfth  commandment,  by  losing  the  world  and 
gaining  his  own  soul.  His  picture  in  "Poor 
White"  of  the  transformation  of  the  leisurely, 
old-fashioned  towns  of  the  Ohio  valley  in  the 
[342] 


TWO    AMERICAN     NOVELISTS 

eighties,  into  ugly,  clattering,  industrial  com- 
munities, through  the  coming  of  machinery  and 
the  factory  system,  has  an  atmosphere  and 
breadth  of  vision  which  should  give  it  a  per- 
manent ])lace  in  literatui^e.  What  is  particu- 
larly interesting  to  this  critic  are  the  scope 
and  depth  of  the  author's  creative  resources. 
In  the  case  of  most  authors  one  sizes  up  more 
or  less  quickly  what  each  man  is  going  to  do, 
what  he  can  do!  His  power  and  limitations 
become  apparent  to  one,  like  the  size  and 
contents  of  a  chamber.  But  in  Mr.  Sherwood 
Anderson's  case  one  does  not  easily  gauge  the 
measure  of  his  insight  and  emotional  powers. 
The  very  defects  of  his  technique,  a  slowness  of 
approach,  a  certain  awkward  fullness,  a  disin- 
clination to  group  his  characters,  and  then  a 
hurried  drama,  steep  his  scenes  with  a  feeling 
of  the  restless  fluidity  and  inconsequence  of  life. 
Is  this  by  design  or  by  instinct?  One  is  impressed 
by  his  spiritual  veracity  and  one  can  by  no  means 
measure  what  his  brooding  imagination  will  have 
further  to  reveal.  A  good  example  is  the  epi- 
sode in  "Poor  White"  of  the  gentle  old  harness- 
maker,  Joe  Wainwright,  ending  with  his  sudden 
madness  and  a  tragic  murder.  The  triumph  of 
machinery  and  unscrupulous  commercialism  have 
[343] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

shattered  the  old  man's  world,  and  he  strikes  in 
his  insanity  at  the  mean,  bragging  Jim  Gibson, 
the  exponent  of  the  new  forces.  It  is  profoundly 
human  this  tragedy,  and  gradually,  as  Mr.  An- 
derson introduces  fresh  individuals  amid  his 
groups  of  figures,  and  sketches  their  histories  and 
characters,  one  perceives  that  his  artistic  method, 
however  halting  or  awkward,  has  much  in  it  of 
the  slow,  cumulative  force  of  nature. 

"Poor  White,"  indeed,  has  nothing  of  the  sur- 
face facility  of  most  American  fiction.  What 
is  notable  is  that  the  author  has  succeeded  in 
showing  the  relation  the  inner  lives  of  his 
people  bear  to  their  environment.  Our  inner 
lives  are  both  moulded  by  our  environment 
and  react  against  it.  The  figure  of  the  plodding, 
hesitating,  inarticulate  inventor,  Hugh  McVey, 
the  genius  whose  inventions  are  financed  and 
pushed  by  the  shrewd  business  men  of  Bid- 
well,  is  impressive  by  its  isolation  amid  the 
racing  tides  of  human  energy  he  has  helped 
to  unleash.  Remark  how  this  shy,  solitary 
figure  gives  perspective  to  the  whole  social 
picture.  Again,  one  is  impressed  by  the  knowl- 
edge and  insight  with  which  the  character 
of  Clara  Butterworth,  the  heroine,  the  rich  farm- 
er's  daughter,    is   rendered.     The   puzzled,   pas- 

[344] 


TWO    AMERICAN    NOVELISTS 

sionate  moods  of  her  budding  girlhood,  her 
emotional  hunger  for  love  and  a  fuller  life,  her 
ambitious  nature,  jarred  and  thrown  back  upon 
itself  by  the  masculine  clumsiness  and  selt-cen- 
tredness  of  the  Bidwell  men  whom  she  attracts, 
all  this  forms  the  foundation  for  her  capture  of 
Hugh  Mc\>y.  The  account  of  Hugh's  desper- 
ate bashfulness  and  escape  on  the  wedding 
night,  and  of  the  wall  of  silence  thrown  down, 
later  in  his  subsequent  relations  with  Clara,  has 
all  the  fluctuating  logic  of  life. 

Where  the  ordinary  novel,  American  or  En- 
glish, depicts  the  individual  commonplaces  of 
thought  and  feeling  and  of  social  behaviour, 
"Poor  White"  penetrates  to  the  deeper  strands 
and  impulses  of  human  nature.  Life  is  always  a 
strange  affair  despite  the  veneered  conventional- 
ity of  mediocre  people.  Mr.  Sherwood  Ander- 
son's book  breaks  through  the  banal  crust  of  con- 
forming appearances  and  this  is  itself  a  feat  for 
an  American  to  accomplish.  An  English  critic  has 
remarked  that  the  artist's  method  in  "Poor 
White"  is  as  though  the  doings  in  some  stirred- 
up  ant-hill  were  being  noted  and  narrated  by  a 
passionless  observer.  A  reader  of  the  book,  a 
Russian  lady,  has  remarked  on  the  hardness  of 
all  the  citizens  of  Bidwell,  and  on  the  lack  of 
[345] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

tenderness  with  which  Mr.  Anderson's  people  all 
treat  one  another.  It  is  indeed  a  little  startling 
when  one  contrasts  "Poor  White"  with  Tche- 
hov's  "Tales"  to  see  how  lacking  in  soft  kindly 
human  warmth  are  the  relations  of  these  ener- 
getic Ohio  people  one  with  another.  But  this 
strange  contrast,  does  it  not,  indeed,  attest  the 
national    veracity   of   Mr.    Anderson's   picture? 


[346] 


THE   CONTEMPORARY   CRITIC 


I 


THE  CONTEMPORARY  CRITIC 

IN  considering  the  province  of  contemporary 
criticism  it  may  be  well  to  begin  by  examin- 
ing how   fundamental  differences  of  mental 
attitude   lead   men   into  different   schools.     The 
watchword  of  one  school  is  Authority/  the  aim 
of  the  other  is  Interpretation. 

First  let  us  accept  the  critic's  delicate  position. 
It  is  no  objection  to  him,  as  is  confusedly  felt, 
that  he  is  a  self-appointed  judge.  The  value  of 
his  pronouncements  lies  in  their  justice^  and  not,  as 
the  vulgar  hold,  in  their  issuing  from  a  high  and 
impressive  seat  of  judgment.  But  how  if  the 
word  critic,  down  the  long  centuries,  has  attached 
to  itself  shades  of  meaning  at  odds  with  the  idea 
of  justice*?  Styling  themselves  the  judges,  the 
discerners  (xpiVw^  separate),  have  not  the  contem- 
porary critics  shown  themselves,  to  the  mind  of 
disillusioned  generations,  kith  and  kin  with  the 
fault-finders'?     Is  it  not  that  the  word  critic,  in 

1  "The  first  and  most  indispensable  [condition]  is  the  ac- 
knowledgment of  the  principle  of  Authority." — Professor  Court- 
hope's  "Law  in  Taste,"  p.  431. 

[349] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

general,  suggests  to  men  an  inimical  shadow  has- 
tening to  run  before  slow-footed  justice"?  and 
where  are  men  more  sure  of  disinterring  old  criti- 
cism than  from  the  learned  grave  of  error  *?  A  cu- 
rious fact  this,  that  when  men  hear  the  word 
Judge,  their  thoughts  turn  towards  the  justice  ad- 
ministered, but  when  they  hear  the  word  Critic, 
they  are  simply  apprehensive;  they  wait  as  men 
expecting  anything.  And  they  are  rarely  disap- 
pointed I 

They  are  rarely  disappointed  because  the  critic's 
utility,  and  liberty  of  delivering  judgment  being 
conceded,  and  since  his  is  the  right  to  construe 
everything  as  he  pleases,  there  remains  only  his 
own  relation  to  his  subject  to  be  settled.  Nothing 
can  there  be,  or  ought  there  to  be,  to  prevent  the 
critic  from  seizing  those  special  vantage  grounds, 
whence  his  subject  seen  from  above,  or  below,  or 
askew,  can  be  caught  at  some  angle,  in  focus  or 
out  of  focus,  at  his  will,  and  so,  either  revealed  or 
contorted,  be  thrust  upon  the  watching  andience. 
But  the  critic  must  vindicate  his  right  to  his  su- 
preme liberty  of  movement  and  use  of  vantage 
ground,  by  proving  to  us  that  his  formidable  clev- 
erness, his  persuasiveness,  his  elastic  manipula- 
tions, re-adjustments  and  interpretations  are  in 
the  service  of  his  passion  for  justice,  or  are  in- 

[350] 


THE   CONTEMPORARY    CRITIC 

spired  by  his  delicate  sense  of  his  relation  to  his 
subject.  For  this  relation  of  the  critic  to  his 
subject  may  be  purely  arbitrary.  Anything  he 
may  draw  from  the  deep  wells  of  his  misun- 
derstanding, if  delivered  oracularly,  is  in  fact  the 
impressive  judgment  the  crowd  accepts!  Is  not 
the  average  critic's  anxiety  to  show  his  super- 
iority over  his  subject,  at  all  costs,  proof  that 
his  ideal  of  justice  is  justice  for  himself?  And 
have  not  the  majority  of  critics  of  every  gen- 
eration been  thereby  subtly  led  to  commit 
critical  felo-de-se?  Therefore  we  may  look 
curiously  and  with  an  intent  eye  at  those  hosts 
of  critics  who  put  themselves  before  their  sub- 
jects, who  put  themselves  first,  a  long,  long 
way  first,  and  their  subjects  last.  Such  crit- 
ics may  on  occasion  utter  good  and  searching  criti- 
cisms, but  does  not  occasional  justice  bring  the 
judges  into  contempt^  Seeking  a  more  convinc- 
ing basis  for  judgment  let  us  put  the  self-seekers 
for  the  time  aside. 

II 

But  how  can  the  critic  be  just?  Just  to  zvhat'^- 
It  is  by  the  world  of  standards  that  the  critic  car- 
ries within  himself  that  he  defines  himself.     And 

[351] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

these  standards  imply  his  prejudices,  his  limita- 
tions, his  partialities  no  less  than  his  insight,  his 
potency,  his  illumination  of  spirit.  Of  such  a 
web  is  his  judgment  strangely  woven;  and  by  the 
respective  worlds  that  this  web  stretches  over  to- 
day shall  we  dehne  each  modern  critic  as  ranged  in 
one  of  two  classes — academic  or  contemporary. 
Each  has  his  separate  standards,  each  dispenses  a 
different  justice,  the  first  the  deferred  justice  of 
a  Court  of  Appeal,  the  second  that  of  an  Arbitra- 
tor. Of  the  third,  the  journalistic  pseudo-critic 
which  our  hasty  age  has  fabricated  to  serve  its 
hasty  purpose,  his  justice  is  that  of  a  crowd  in 
motion.  The  Court  of  Appeal's  justice  springs 
from  a  resifting  of  accumulated  evidence,  the 
Arbitrator's  justice  from  swift  insight  into  con- 
tending forces — the  age  and  the  man.  Whose 
task  is  more  puzzling"?  If  a  strange  darkness 
descends  not  rarely  upon  the  academic  critics, 
upon  those  elect  men,  privileged  to  judge  the 
buried  past,  who  cast  their  purged  gaze  towards 
the  Olympian  peaks  of  literature  standing  out 
clear  and  well-defined  beyond  the  confused  and 
shifting  foregrounds  of  our  age,  if  on  the?n  de- 
scends the  darkness,  what  misty  seas  of  error,  con- 
tinually sweeping  up  fom  the  modern  plains,  must 
envelop   the   contemporary   critic^     How   to   be 

[352] 


THE   CONTEMPORARY   CRITIC 

just  to  our  contemporaries,  when  the  "movements" 
and  the  needs  of  the  generation  continually  force 
the  critic  to  shift  his  ground  hastily,  in  order  to 
keep  the  range  of  the  advancing  and  passing  con- 
temporary crowds'?  What  standards  is  the  con- 
temporary critic  to  be  just  to'?  Must  not,  after  all, 
every  critic's  aim  be  to  fight  for  his  own  special 
creed  in  the  fnelce  of  contemporary  movements, 
and  must  not  he  break  lances  with  all  men  who 
bar  his  passage?  If,  for  example,  like  Mr.  An- 
drew Lang,  he  carry  within  himself  a  praiseworthy 
passion  for  what  is  "old  and  seasoned,"  ^  or  like 
Senor  Valdes  "  he  mourn  over  the  decadence  of 
modern  literature,  must  he  not  strive  to  close  with 
his  strait  creed  the  mouth  of  this  unworthy  gener- 
ation'? The  answer  is — Assuredly  he  must,  and 
by  the  nature  of  his  insight  into  the  movements  of 
his  day  shall  we  class  him  as  an  academic  ^  or  con- 

^  "We  ought  to  aim  at  excellence  of  matter  and  form,  and 
we  may  be  content  to  think  that  all  goodness  of  form  is  old, 
and  is  not  fantastic." — "Literature  in  the  Nineteenth  Century": 
Essay   by   Andrew    Lang. 

-  "I  cast  my  eye  over  Europe,  and  I  see  nothing  in  poetry  and 
painting  but  lugubrious  and  prosaic  scenes,  and  in  music  I 
hear  nothing  but  sounds  of  death." — "The  Decadence  of  Modern 
Literature":  Essay  by  Senor  Valdes. 

3  "The  ability  and  success  with  which  the  journalist  discharges 
his  functions  naturally  excite  emulation  among  those  who  prac- 
tise the  fine   arts.     They  imitate  his  methods.     Hence  they   are 

[353] 


FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

temporary  critic,  or  merely  as  an  engrossed  in- 
defatigable journalist.  Assuredly  it  is  the  hon- 
ourable task  of  the  academic  critic,  of  the  scholar, 
and  of  many  a  fine  spirit  to  rally  in  the  defence  of 
"the  old  and  seasoned"  and  uphold  the  cause  of 
great  literature,  and  be  deaf  to  the  interested 
shouts  of  the  marketplace  and  the  present-day 
turmoil.  So  strong  may  that  instinct  be  that  we 
find  Joubert,  that  finest  of  spirits,  would  admit 
to  the  shelves  of  his  library  neither  Voltaire  nor 
Rousseau,  for  fear  of  contamination  !  though  prob- 
ably Mr.  Lang,  who  bars  the  great  Russian  author 
Tolstoy,  and  the  great  Scandinavian,  Ibsen,  has 
decided  that  Voltaire  and  Rousseau  are  "old  and 
seasoned"  enough  to  be  innocuous  reading,  both 
for  the  crowd  and  for  himself.  Certainly  the 
academic  critic,  strong  in  every  age,  from  the  days 
of  the  Alexandrians  to  the  days  of  M.  Brune- 
tiere,  will  be  always  with  us,  and  in  this  hour 
of  commercialism  in  letters  and  of  the  Americani- 
zation of  the  world,  he  deserves  that  fine  gold 
should  be  intertwined  in  his  professional  laurels. 
Whether  he  direct  his  age  from  an  Oxford  Chair, 
or  whether  he  illumine  the  pages  of  illustrated 

led  to  Realism  in  the  choice  of  subject,  Impressionism  .  .  ." — 
Professor  Courthope,  "Law  in  Taste."  (Fielding  and  Sterne 
we  see  are  thus  accounted  for! — E.  G.) 

[354] 


THE    CONTEMPORARY    CRITIC 

"weeklies,"  his  brave  stand  for  good  literature,  for 
classic  literature,  for  the  literature  that  the  happy 
inspiration  of  the  ages  has  led  him  to  reconse- 
crate solemnly,  will  see  him  enrolled,  if  not  in  the 
ranks  of  the  immortals,  assuredly  in  the  ranks  of 
their  cupbringers  and  their  torchbearers.  "They 
loved  the  old,  good  literature  that  the  common 
man  passed  by,"  That  is  in  itself  a  just  and  noble 
epitaph  for  the  true  academic  critic.  But  many 
are  the  methods  of  advancing  the  cause  of  good 
literature,  and  we  humbly  urge  that  the  favourite 
method  of  the  academic  critic,  that  of  refusing 
entrance  to  the  spirit,  taste,  and  tendency  of  his 
time,^  would  almost  disqualify  the  contemporary 
critic  from  exercising  his  functions."  The  web  of 
the  contemporary  critic's  mind  is  otherwise  woven. 
So  complex  and  diverse  are  the  worlds  of  modern 
tendency,  which  the  critic's  web  must  stretch  to 

1  "  ...  the  modern  artist,  in  opposition  to  ancient  practice, 
either  ignores  the  necessity  of  finding  his  groundwork  in  the 
selection  of  a  subject  common  to  himself  and  his  audience  or 
insists  on  his  right  of  treating  his  subject  without  regard  to  the 
public  taste  or  experience.  Every  one  can  see  for  himself  that 
this  is  the  way  in  which  an  essentially  modern  artist  like  Ibsen 
constructs   his    plays." — Professor    Courthope,    "Law    in   Taste." 

2  "It  has  been  a  great  century  in  letters,  but  its  earlier 
glories  in  letters  are  little  studied  (with  a  few  exceptions),  and 
the  literature  of  the  moment  is  only  in  one  way  encouraging. 
It  cannot  well  be  worse;  it  is  the  dark  hour  before  the  da^«n." 
— Andrew  Lang,  "Literature  in  the  Nineteenth   Century." 

[355] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

and  embrace  today,  that  one  quality,  receptivity, 
must  be  inherent  in  the  fibre  of  the  contemporary 
critic's  mind.  The  critic  who,  in  the  cause  of 
good  literature,  or  in  the  cause  of  "seasoned  liter- 
ature," is  fond  of  waving  various  manifestations 
of  comtemporary  literature  aside,^  he  who  refuses 
to  examine  certain  aspects,  and  he  who  forbids 
life  to  manifest  itself  in  this  or  that  fashion 
through  literature,-  is  in  fact  seeking  to  dictate  to 
life  the  new  forces  of  its  growth  and  the  new  hori- 
zons. A  serious,  an  invaluable  academic  critic  he 
may  be,  but  all  the  same  a  partisan  of  the  classics, 
priding  himself  on  fencing  out  from  his  palisaded 
enclosure  that  upheaving  modern  world  which 
must  evolve  new  forms  in  art,  new  ideas,  for- 
mulas, styles  and  jargons,  or  else  drop  back  into 
scholasticism,  imitation,  and  conventionalism  of 
form.  The  academic  critic's  contention  at  bot- 
tom amounts  to  this — that  life  should  express  it- 

1  "Meanwhile  we  must  endure  constant  exhibitions  of  crude 
and  one-sided  experiments,  'symbolism,'  adventures  in  odd  me- 
tres, tales  without  beginning  or  end,  or  interest,  uncouth  at- 
tempts at  phonetic  reproduction  of  rude  dialects,  mincing  eu- 
phuisms, miscalled  'style,'  and  many  other  tribulations,  among 
them  flocks  of  imitations  of  everything  that  has  a  week's 
success." — Andrew  Lang.     Ibid. 

2  "Great  stores  of  'realism,'  'naturalism,'  Ibsenism,  deca- 
dence, and  art  according  to  Maeterlinck,  have  been  unloaded  on 
a  public,  which,  lectured  out  of  its  natural  human  tastes,  is 
already   reverting  to   them." — Andrev/   Lang.   Ibid. 

[356] 


THE   CONTEMPORARY   CRITIC 

self  only  by  certain  authorized  forms  of  literature, 
and  literature  should  not  be  free  to  work  out  new 
channels  for  life's  expression/  So  perchance 
ought  it  to  be!  but  fortunately  so  it  is  not.  How 
have  the  "authorized  forms"  been  attained,  we 
may  ask,  if  not  through  the  uncouth  beginnings, 
the  ceaseless  experiments  of  successive  genera- 
tions^ And  no  amount  of  critically  applying  the 
standards  of  culture  of  bygone  ages  to  the  litera- 
ture and  art  of  a  present  generation  can  appreci- 
ably modify  a  "movement's"  evolution;  every 
new  literary  movement,  renaissance,  or  fresh  de- 
parture in  art  and  letters,  whether  fine  or  cheap, 
whether  long  lasting  or  transitory  in  its  effects 
must  spring  largely  from  fresh  needs  and  outlooks, 
and  from  the  new  vistas  opened  by  life  to  each 
successive  generation. 

This  being  so,  in  order  to  be  just  to  any  school 
of  writers,  to  any  literary  movement  of  any 
period,  must  not  the  critic  first  try  and  investi- 
gate the  mental  outlook  arising  from  the  social 
conditions  of  the  life  of  which  any  school  is  a 
manifestation?  of  which  it  is  a  revelation*?  to 
which  it  is  a  contradiction'?     Must  we  not  first 

1  "The  standards  of  poetry  have  been  fixed  long  ago  by 
certain  inspired  writers  whose  authorit\'  it  is  no  longer  lawful 
to  call  in  question." — Edinburgh  Revieiu,  No.  i.  p.  63.  "On 
Southey   and   his   School." 

[357] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

of  all  examine  the  author's  attitude  in  relation  to 
the  prevailing  tendencies  round  him?  We  may 
often,  of  course,  not  succeed  in  discovering  how 
a  particular  writer  has  been  fertilized  by  his  age, 
and  certain  writers  seem  to  spring  up  independ- 
ently of  their  environment;  but,  in  considering  the 
main  body  of  the  literature  of  the  generation,  will 
not  the  main  proposition  from  which  the  contem- 
porary critic  should  start  be  something  as  follows : 
All  literature  is  documentary  evidence  on  mind 
or  life.  Every  age  seems  to  produce  in  the  bulk 
of  its  literature,  those  varieties  of  special  literary 
food  which  are  best  calculated  to  nourish  the  pre- 
vailing conceptions  of  life;  and  simultaneously 
from  the  community's  ranks  (always  silently  de- 
veloping fresh  unseen  forces)  constantly  there 
emerge  fresh  men  bringing  with  them  new  concep- 
tions and  new  forms,  which  challenge  the  old 
forms  and  conceptions.  Now  when  critics  are 
found  strenuously  contending  against  new  schools 
of  writers,  and  new  forces,^  they  are  nearly  always 
showing  their  blindness  to  the  forces  of  life  work- 
ing in  and  behind  these  writers,  and  so  they  have 
not  the  scale  by  which  to  render  justice  to  its  liter- 

1  "A  splenetic  and  idle  discontent  with  the  existing  insti- 
tutions of  society  seems  to  be  at  the  bottom  of  all  their  serious 
and  peculiar  sentiments." — Edinburgh  Re<vieiv  on  "Southey  and 
Coleridge." 

[358] 


THE    CONTEMPORARY    CRITIC 

ature/  Irritated  by  new  methods,  new  ferments 
and  uncouth  experunents,"  these  critics  do  not 
understand  that  even  foolish  fashions,  if  you  will, 
of  contemporary  literature  do  "show  the  very  age 
and  body  of  the  time  his  form  and  pressure." 
The  critic  may  indeed  say  to  contemporary 
writers :  "By  all  the  tests  of  good  literature  I  find 
your  standards  execrable,"  but  should  we  not  re- 
quire from  contemporary  criticism  a  justice  more 
explanatory  and  more  penetrating'?  "The  law 
does  not  deal  with  a  man's  motives,  but  only  with 
the  result  of  his  actions"  is  a  principle  in  juris- 
prudence consistently  set  aside  by  all  the  great 
critics  of  human  life.  And  certainly  that  finer 
justice  by  which  the  critic  seeks  to  place  each 
man's  performance,  will  lead  him  first  to  in- 
quire— what  necessity  in  you^  what  inheritance, 
what  outcome  of  what  conditions  give  you  your 
character,  and  make  you  the  mouthpiece  of  the  life 
which  you  represent  to  us^     This  is  the  finer  jus- 

1  "From  the  steppes  of  Russia  come  delirious  mystics  who 
work  up  the  country  of  Moliere,  Rabelais  and  Voltaire.  From 
thence  surge  unwholesome  analyses  and  scandalous  impro- 
prieties,  that   corrupt    the    sons   of    Cervantes.'' — Senor    Valdes. 

2  "New  sentiments  and  new  images  others  may  produce;  but 
to  attempt  any  further  improvement  of  versification  will  be 
dangerous.  Art  and  diligence  have  now  done  their  best,  and 
what  shall  be  added  will  be  effort  of  tedious  toil,  and  needless 
curiosity." — "Life  of  Pope."     Johnson's  Works,  xi.  pp.   194,  195. 

[359] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

tice,  that  which  considers  literature  not  as  fruit 
detached  from  the  tree,  the  soil,  the  climate,  the 
influences  which  have  brought  it  forth,  but  that 
which  shows  its  human  meaning,  its  curious  value 
in  relation  to  the  contemporary  attitude  of  mind 
it  bodies  forth.  If  the  critic  does  not  pursue  this 
method,  but  seeks  to  fix  the  value  of  his  age's 
literature  by  reference  to  the  aesthetic  standards 
of  the  literature  of  the  past,  we  shall  find  him 
denying  "excellence"  to  whole  schools  of  litera- 
ture, ^or  disdaining  to  inquire  into  the  significance 
of  the  really  significant  tendencies  of  his  age.^ 
We  shall  find  him,  in  short,  failing  to  show  that 
passion  for  justice^  that  delicate  sense  of  his  rela- 
tion to  his  subject,  which  should  lead  him  to  in- 
terpret his  age's  productions.  We  shall  find  him, 
finally,  ranging  himself  amidst  that  host  of  critics, 

1  "The  same  rule  applies  to  continental  literature.  'Deca- 
dence' and  reaction  from  Decadence  (as  in  M.  Rostand)  ; 
'Realism'  and  reaction  from  Realism;  social  philosophies,  striv- 
ing to  take  literary  form  (a?  in  Tolstoy)  ;  theories  and  con- 
tending critical  slogans  meet  us  everywhere,  but  we  find  little 
spontaneous  genius,  little  permanent  excellence." — Andrew  Lang, 
"Literature  in  the  Nineteenth  Century." 

2  "So  when  there  appears  one  of  these  ostentatious,  enormous, 
wearisome  works,  enveloped  in  vagueness  and  mystery,  full 
of  symbolical  and  mystical  aspirations,  like  many  of  the 
Romantic  Schools  of  the  past,  and  nearly  all  of  the  modern 
naturalists,  symbolists,  and  decadents,  the  public  is  delighted," 
&c. — Senor    Valdes,    "The    Decadence    of    Modern    Literature." 

[360] 


THE   CONTEMPORARY   CRITIC 

who,  avowedly  fighting  in  the  cause  of  good  liter- 
ature, often  ignore,  misread,  and  misinterpret  in 
their  day  that  very  literature  which  is  good/ 

III 

What,  then,  is  the  contemporary  critic's  duty^ 
He  cannot  hope  to  do  more  than  fix  a  provisional 
value  on  the  literature  of  his  day.  But  his  aim 
must  surely  be  (a)  to  discover  in  the  great  mass  of 
literary  "matter"  the  fresh  creative  spirits  bring- 
ing new  illuminations,  new  valuations  into  litera- 
ture and  life;  (b)  to  set  down  the  characteristics 
of  those  contemporary  documents  which  do  betray 
to  the  age  "his  form  and  pressure"  and  (c)  to  de- 
tect the  forces  underlying  the  literary  movements, 
and  explain  the  nature  of  the  life  which  deter- 
mines their  qualities.  He  aims  at  justice  thereby; 
and  though  he  rarely  attains  it,  perhaps  his  verdict 
on  the  newcomers,  whom  he  greets,  is  about  as  use- 
ful as  that  pronounced  by  the  academic  critic  upon 
the  ages  which  have  fled  far  from  him.     Let  us 

1  "Mr.  Wordsworth's  diction  has  nowhere  any  pretence  to 
elegance  or  dignity.  .  .  .  Alice  Fell  is  'trash.'  .  .  .  The 
poem  on  the  Cuckoo  is  'absurd.'  'The  Ode  on  Immortality' 
is  'the  most  illegible  and  unintelligible  part  of  the  whole 
publ(ication.  .  .  .  We  venture  to  hope  that  there  is  now  an 
end  of  this  folly.'  " — Edinburgh  Re'vieiv,  xxx^v.  203. 

[361] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

apply  this  humble  scheme  of  the  critic's  duty  to 
some  of  the  literary  "signs  and  portents"  on  our 
horizon. 

IV 

What  are  the  manifestations  of  contemporary 
literature?  What  does  authority  say?  "The 
literature  of  the  moment  is  only  in  one  way  en- 
couraging. It  cannot  well  be  worse:  it  is  the 
dark  hour  before  the  dawn,"  says  the  distinguished 
critic  whom  we  have  already  quoted.  But  why, 
why  are  the  critics  always  longing  for  the  dawn 
instead  of  rejoicing  in  the  deluge?  For  is  it  not 
the  hour  of  deluge  and  of  no  dawn  that  arrives, 
and  of  a  still  more  wonderful  deluge  tomorrow? 
Looking  at  the  seas  of  modern  literature  before  us, 
around  us,  advancing  upon  us,  and  recalling  the 
text  "The  fountains  of  the  great  deep  were  bro- 
ken up  .  .  .  and  the  waters  prevailed  exceed- 
ingly upon  the  earth,"  it  may  be  asked:  Is  not 
this  literary  inundation  indeed  the  uncontrol- 
lable expression  of  modern  life,  of  its  rushing 
volume,  and  is  not  the  critic's  vocation  to  face 
with  a  spirit  curious,  undaunted,  free,  this  litera- 
ture's far-circling  expanse,  rejoicing  in  ascertain- 
ing its  depths  and  racing  currents  and  all  the  por- 
tents of  its  babbling  shallows?     Can  any  agency 

[362] 


THE   CONTEMPORARY   CRITIC 

assuage,  or  academic  precept  stem,  this  incalcu- 
lable flood? 

What  is  the  special  note  of  this  literature  that 
"cannot  well  be  worse"'?  Vulgarity  and  banal- 
ity, some  will  answer.  "The  note  of  emanci- 
pation from  certain  human  decencies,"  Mr.  Lang 
replies;^  but  does  not  a  broader  note  in  our  litera- 
ture's voluminous  voice,  one  of  a  deeper  import, 
force  itself  upon  us"?  Shall  we  not  rather  recog- 
nize that  modern  life's  fecundity,  diversity,  and 
complexity,  along  with  its  vulgarity,  are  being 
marvellously  mirrored  by  the  literature  of  our 
time,  ^  that  our  literature  breathes  that  spirit  of 

1  "The  note  of  the  early  century  was  that  of  emancipation 
from  rules  which  had  always  been  conventional,  the  rules 
of  French  criticism  under  Louis  XIV.  The  note  of  the  clos- 
ing century  is  emancipation  from  certain  human  decencies." — 
Andrew  Lang,   "Literature   in  the   Nineteenth  Century." 

2  To  take  only  the  fifty  writers  best  known  to  us  in  Eng- 
land as  creative  artists  who  have  produ'ced  their  main  work 
since  i860  (the  year  that  marks  for  Mr.  Lang  "the  degener- 
acy of  literature")  we  may  cite:  Meredith,  Tolstoy,  Tur- 
genev,  Tchehov,  Bjornson,  Ibsen,  Maupassant,  Walt  Whitman, 
Henry  James,  Anatole  France,  Howells,  Nietzsche,  Jules 
Lemaitre,  the  Goncourts,  Zola,  Bourget,  Pater,  Rossetti,  Swin- 
burne, Morris,  Maeterlinck,  Heredia,  Mallarme,  Verlaine,  Serao, 
Fogazzaro,  Carducci,  D'Anunzio,  Negri,  Sienkiewicz,  Spiel- 
hagen,  Hauptmann,  Sudermann,  Couperus,  Verhaeren,  Valdes, 
Jonas  Lie,  Jacobson,  Hardy,  Henley,  Stevenson,  Mark  Twain, 
Sarah  Ome  Jewett,  Miss  Thackeray,  Miss  Wilkins,  Daudet, 
Robert  Bridges,  Jokai,  Orzeszko. 

[363] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

expansion  whereby  the  modern  man's  horizons  are 
constantly  enlarged,  and  whereby  he  is  today,  no 
less  than  yesterday,  exploring,  seizing,  and  de- 
veloping the  illimitable  fields  of  life  and  thought 
stretching  for  his  annexation  and  investigation. 
And  is  not  our  literature,  in  the  main,  one  of 
sympathetic  curiosity  and  keen  inquiry  as  to  the 
thousands  of  roads  life  is  going/  Wherever  the 
civilized  man  places  his  foot,  in  whatsoever  spot 
of  the  globe  he  finds  his  habitation,  there  is  con- 
temporary literature  speedily  recording  hiin^  and 
so  adding  to  the  old  world's  realization  of  its  new 
life.^  Centuries  to  come,  looking  back  on  our 
generation's  literature,  will  see  in  it  the  ceaseless 
movement  and  expansion  that  characterize  our 
day.  Now,  if  our  literature  brings  to  men's  cog- 
nizance so  fully  the  variegated  life  of  European 
societies,  its  decadence  in  those  "centres"  where 
decadence  is  ^  and  its  vigorous  expansion  where 

1  "I  can  at  all  events  attempt  without  undue  temerity  to  dis- 
cover the  common  tendency  of  writers  of  to-day.  You  meet,  I 
think,  almost  everywhere  an  aversion  to  the  conventional,  the 
artificial,  and  a  patient  and  persjstent  search  for  Nature, 
reality  and  truth." — Jules  Pravieux.  "On  Contemporary  French 
Literature,"    Athenceiim,    July    6,    1901. 

2  Stevenson  in  the  South  Seas;  Pierre  Loti  in  Indo-China; 
Stephen  Crane  in  Mexjjco;  Joseph  Conrad  in  Malaya;  Henry 
Lawson  in  Australia;  Maxim  Gorky  in  South  Russia;  V. 
Korolenko  in   Siberia,   &c.   &c. 

3  Huysman,    Eckhoud,    Pierre    Louys,    Catulle    Mendes,    &c. 

[364] 


THE   CONTEMPORARY    CRITIC 

growth  is/  does  it  not  accomplish  its  mission? 
Can  the  literature  of  decaying  communities  and 
the  literature  of  the  new  peoples  beyond  sea  alike 
gain  sincerity  by  their  spiritual  adjustment  to 
classic  models'?  Yet  the  academic  critic's  dis- 
satisfaction with  modern  literature  poises  itself 
delicately  on  the  vast  and  rounded  contention  that 
they  can  and  should."  If  we  have  to  endure,  in 
Mr.  Lang's  words,  "constant  exhibitions  of  crude 
and  one-sided  experiments,"  "symbolism,  adven- 
tures in  odd  metres,  etc.,"  may  we  not  recognize 
that  these  "one-sided"  experiments  cry  aloud  with 
the  great  voice  of  Culture  which  has  taught  the 
general  public  to  become  articulate,  which  has 
opened  a  way  for  the  yeasty  waters  of  popular 
literature  and  carried  them  over  the  breakwaters 
of  the  Academies  and  the  "literary  men,"  and  over 
the  quiet  beaches  sacred  to  the  "fine  spirit"? 
Must  we  not  recognize  as  kindred  phenomena  of 
one   and   the   same  great  spectacle — the   world's 

1  Bret   Harte,   Rudyard   Kipling,    Hamlin    Garland,   &c. 

2  "The  most  marked  characteristic  in  the  contemporary  art 
and  literature  of  every  country  in  Europe  is  the  pursuit  of 
Novelty;  by  which  word  I  mean  not  the  freshness,  character, 
and  individuality,  which  are  essential  to  every  work  of  genius, 
but  the  determination  to  discover  absolutely  new  matter  for 
artistic  treatment.  .  .  .  The  causes  of  Poetical  Decadence  .  .  . 
are  moral  not  physical." — Professor  Courthope,  ''Law  in  Taste." 

[365] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

progress — the  facts  that,  on  the  other  hand,  never 
was  a  generation  more  culture  ridden  than  ours, 
never  were  there  so  many  "Classics  for  the  Mil- 
lion" and  "World  Classics,"  so  many  "Edited 
Texts,"  "Golden  Treasuries,"  and  "Globe  Libra- 
ries," so  many  "Temple  Shakespeares"  and  Cen- 
tury Scotts,"  so  many  "Manuals  of  Literature," 
"Literary  Histories"  and  "Histories  of  Litera- 
ture," so  many  "Standard  Editions"  and  "Com- 
plete Works" ;  never  were  there  so  many  "Royal 
Roads"  and  "Extension  Lectures,"  and  certified 
professors  of  literature  and  language,  so  many 
registered  teachers  and  scholarly  expounders  of 
all  the  standards  that  the  academic  critics  deem 
to  be  "old  and  excellent" — nay,  is  not  the  Daily 
MciU  itself  edited  by  young  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge scholars'? — and  yet,  yet  on  the  other  hand 
this  is  the  age  of  "The  Sorrows  of  Satan"  and 
Miss  Marie  Corelli's  other  novels,  of  "The  Eter- 
nal City,"  and  Mr.  Hall  Caine's  novels  running 
into  their  millions  of  copies;  and  of  Mr.  Guy 
Boothby  and  his  hundreds  of  thousands  of  copies. 
Does  it  not  almost  look  as  if  it  were  the  success- 
ful application  of  the  "sweetness  and  light"  of 
the  classics  to  the  Philistine  soul  of  our  world 
that  has  aroused  the  great  general  public  to  man- 
ifest itself  in  literature,  and  to  pour  from  the 

[366] 


THE   CONTEMPORARY   CRITIC 

floodgates  of  its  consciousness  that  whirling  sea 
which  "cannot  well  be  worse'"?  And  while  aca- 
demic teaching  and  the  literary  deluge  synchro- 
nize, is  it  possible  that  we  shall  not  get  rid  of 
either  in  'this  inspiring  modern  world?  Is  it 
possible  that  we  are  merely  viewing  two  phan- 
tasmagorial  aspects  of  one  and  the  same  ingenu- 
ous spectacle? 


In  any  case,  whether  it  be  the  diffusion  of  su- 
perficial culture  which  assists  the  depraved  human 
mind  to  produce  the  bulk  of  popular  literature, 
must  not  the  contemporary  critic  accept  that  wider 
standpoint  which  involves  a  recognition  of  the 
"bulk"  as  "the  literature  of  the  self-education  of 
the  crowd" — the  mental  food  necessary  to  its  pres- 
ent state  of  development'?  And  will  he  not  bet- 
ter seize  its  significance,  and  indeed  render  it  ab- 
solute justice  by  treating  it  as  documentary  evi- 
dence of  the  community's  mental  outlook,  needs, 
wishes,  and  states  of  feeling?  ^     Is  not  the  crowd 

1  For  example,  perhaps  the  fullest  justice  that  we  could  render 
to  that  remarkable  work  "The  Eternal  City"  would  be  by 
analysing  its  caricature  of  Tolstoyism  and  by  considering  its 
solemn  projection  of  the  Suburban  Protestant  lowcr-middle- 
class  conscience  through  the  airy  medium  of  Fleet  Street 
sensationalism    into    the    indifferent    corridors    of    the    Vatican. 

[367] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

trying  to  get  into  the  whole  house  of  modern 
literature,  and  find  out  its  life  there,  and  is  there 
not  today  such  a  noise  and  confusion,  such  a  bang- 
ing of  doors  and  opening  of  windows  that  the 
house  is  rendered  temporarily  uninhabitable  to 
the  "line  spirit"?  And  are  not  the  most  "popu- 
lar" writers  very,  very  insignificant  as  creators,  but 
plainly  significant  as  the  instructors,  the  overseers, 
the  spokesmen  of  the  community's  ignorance?  ^ 
If  the  critics  would  only  recognize  as  a  national 
drama  this  surprising  unlocking  of  the  doors  of 
our  heterogeneous  General  Public's  consciousness 
and  its  flinging  itself  outwards  into  literature, 
eager  to  bring  its  world  into  violent  and  familiar 
contact  with  the  great  stream  of  life  flowing  out- 
side it,  would  they  not  fix  the  valuations  of  this 
literature,  get  all  round  it,  see  into  its  meaning, 
and  thereby  place  it  better  than  by  simply  con- 
demning it  as  not  in  harmony  with  certain  esthetic 
canons.  We  are  all  witnessing  today  the  phe- 
nomenon of  the  culture  of  the  community  not  be- 

1  "Hall  Caine's  'Eternal  City'  is  a  great  novel  revealing 
the  author  at  the  very  zenith  of  his  gift.  .  .  .  The  book's 
greatest  wealth  is  its  wealth  of  contagious  and  engrossing 
emotion.  It  is  a  triumph  of  imagination,  of  power  over  the 
feelings,  as  it  is  of  dexterously  used  observation  of  an  his- 
toric and  most  interesting  and  deeply  agitated  people  .  .  ."' — 
The   Liverpool   Daily    Post. 

[368] 


THE   CONTEMPORARY    CRITIC 

ing  grown  slowly  from  the  deep  roots  of  its  life 
(by  which  slow  growth  for  example,  flowered  the 
exquisite  poetry  and  exquisite  arts  of  many  old- 
world  peasantries),  but  being  transplanted,  im- 
ported, and  administered  by  the  Press,  the  acade- 
mies, and  other  wholesale  agencies  for  indiscrim- 
inate consumption.  And  the  unassimilated  "cul- 
ture" of  our  modern  commercialized  world  is  the 
ferment  in  the  hasty  brew  of  "popular"  work/ 
It  is  the  chief  source  of  very  bad  art.  Accord- 
ingly the  contemporary  critic,  seeing  the  relation 
this  "culture"  bears  to  society's  mental  outlook, 
seeing  inevitably  why  it  is  prevalent,  and  the  pur- 
pose it  serves,  must  discriminate  most  sharply  be- 
tween the  comparatively  small  bands  of  artists 
whose  creative  instincts  shape  true  works  of  art 
for  us,  and  for  posterity,  and  the  running  multi- 
tude of  writers  whose  works  reflect  the  common 
perishing  valuations  of  our  bustling  and  self- 
important  time.  Herein  lies  the  distinction  be- 
tween living  and  dead  criticism.  For  if  the  critic 
fails  to  detect  in  the  deluge  of  his  day  the  spirits 
that  being  finely  creative  open  new  windows  for 

^  For  example,  the  rise  to-day  of  a  pseudo-realistic,  pseudo- 
romantic  school  of  fiction  (examples,  Mr.  Anthony  Hope's 
"Rupert  of  Hentzau,"  Miss  Fowler's  "The  Double  Thread") 
suggests  that  the  great  middle-class  public  is  suffering  from  an 
indigestion  of  culture  and  a  chaos  of  ideals. 

[369] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

our  consciousness,  if  he  confuses  what  is  signif- 
icant with  what  offers  us  a  mere  face  value,  he 
fails.  Weary  of  the  deluge,  he  is  in  danger  of 
rejecting  his  age  en  bloc  or  of  hailing,  let  us  say, 
the  achievements  of  Mr.  Rider  Haggard,  and  of 
being  critically  disheartened  by  the  "symbolism" 
of  Maeterlinck. 


VI 


Seeking  then,  in  this  weltering  literary  flood 
today  loosed  upon  us,  for  talents  of  special  orig- 
inality which  add  something  really  living  to  litera- 
ture, and  for  those  documents  of  life  which  show 
the  age  in  meaning  outline,  the  critic  understands 
first  that  justice  implies  that  receptive  spirit, 
which  hastens  to  recognize  each  writer's  world, 
listens  to  his  message  whatever  it  be,  and  responds 
to  anything  individual  he  is  privileged  to  reveal 
to  us  about  which  other  men  are  dumb.  Sec- 
ondly the  critic  asks:  "Does  this  talent  open  to 
us  a  new  window  into  the  world  of  men,  the 
world  of  the  mind'?  Wherein  lies  the  difference 
between  this  new  window  and  all  the  other  win- 
dows'?" And,  generally,  in  the  case  of  those  few 
windows  opened  for  the  first  time,  which  are  most 
strange  to  us,  how  apt  are  the  critics  to  have  an 
[370] 


THE   CONTEMPORARY   CRITIC 

actual  distaste  for  them/  at  first  refusing  to  look 
out  of  them,  and  even  clamouring  to  have  them 
blocked  up  altogether." 

But  in  the  majority  of  cases  since  the  windows, 
we  agree,  merely  open  into  the  commonplaces  of 
the  human  mind,  then  the  critic's  duty  is  to  see 
whether  but  one  solitary  face  looks  out  or  a  multi- 
tude of  contemporary  faces.  The  majority  of 
litterateurs  in  every  age  are  as  human  wax  on 
which  are  impressed  individual  records  of  the 
modes  of  thought,  institutions,  ethics,  fashions, 
and  general  forms  of  life  current  in  their  day. 
The  average  mind  having  little  original  creative 
power,  with  which  to  resist,  transform,  or  ap- 
praise the  prevailing  standards,  gives  us  the  face- 
value  only  of  the  life  around.  And  the  critic,  in 
dealing  with  this  class  of  literature,  will  stamp  it 
as  the  crowd's.  Crowds,  en  masse,  have  too  their 
literature,  the  writings  in  ogham,  the  rock-carvings 

1  The  Guardian  on  Charles  Kingsley's  "Yeast":  "It  is 
the  countenance  the  writer  gives  to  the  worst  tendencies  of 
the  day,  and  the  manner  in  which  he  conceals  loose  morality 
in  a  dress  of  high  sounding  and  philosophic  phraseology 
which  calls  for  plain  and  decided  condemnation."  Quoted 
by    Mr.    Basil    Worsfold   in    "Judgment   in    Literature." 

2  See  Mr.  William  Archer's  list  of  first  English  criticisms 
on  Ibsen's  plays, — "Carrion,"  "Loathsome  Putridity,"  "Shock- 
ing Immorality,"  &c.,  &c.     No.  15.  V.  3. — Dec,  1901. 

[371] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

of  their  mental  state,  and  in  order  to  do  it  justice 
the  critic  must  fix  in  his  criticisms  these  people's 
valuations  of  life,  and  he  must  try  and  get  behind 
their  literature  and  see  what  it  falsifies  as  well 
as  what  it  reveals  in  the  nation's  life/  To  sub- 
ject the  bulk  of  contemporary  literature  to  high 
aesthetic  and  literary  standards  is  often  simply 
to  suppress  its  significance.  As  the  majority  of 
new  works  are  but  the  age's  ephemeral  children 
they  can  only  make  an  appeal  to  their  parent  age; 
the  contemporary  critic's  duty,  therefore,  is  to  fix, 
in  the  significant  documents  of  the  life  of  his  time, 
the  character  of  his  age;  and  to  the  majority  of 
average  works  of  literature  he  will  do  justice  by 
treating  them  as  revelations  of  the  contemporary 
mind,  knowing  that  though  the  inner  individual 
spirit  of  these  typical  documents  may  be  of  very 
little  significance,  its  testimony  to  the  overlord- 
ship  of  the  age  may  be  of  very  much. 

To  come  back  to  our  starting-point :  how  can  the 
critic  be  just?  If  we  penetrate  into  the  critics' 
camp  do  we  not  find  it  pitched  at  the  meeting  of 
many  cross  roads  along  which  the  various  critics, 
asking  "What  is  the  value  of  this  new  literary 

1  For  example,  the  "immoral  passages"  of  a  "scrofulous'' 
French  novel  often  imply  there  is  little  to  hide  and  much  pre- 
tence of  immorality.  The  English  novel  hides  and  assumes, 
equally,   certain   pretences   of  the   national   life. 

[372] 


THE   CONTEMPORARY    CRITIC 

field  presented  to  us?"  are  seen  taking  each  some 
individual  path,  some  idiosyncratic  lane  of  judg- 
ment, whence  they  obtain  some  special  prospect, 
but  rarely  command  a  wide  view  of  the  main  lie 
of  the  land.  So  trying  to  get  nearer  to  just  judg- 
ment we  are  led  to  criticize  the  critics'  relative 
justice  and  we  then  see  the  critics  as  men  fulfilling 
dissimilar  functions.  The  rank  and  file  of  the 
army  of  critics  would  indeed  seem  to  serve  as  the 
faithful  janissaries  of  the  main  body  of  the  pub- 
lic's prevailing  concepts,  ethics  and  mental  out- 
look, janissaries  whose  function  it  is  to  attack  all 
literature  that  is  strange  or  rare,  the  assimilation 
of  which  may  be  held  to  be  harmful  to  the  na- 
tional constitution.  (Example.  The  general 
English  criticism  of  the  French  "naturalists.") 
Other  critics  stand  as  the  spokesmen  of  foreign  or 
classic  culture,  the  study  of  which  in  their  judg- 
ment would  bring  to  their  nation  a  wider  outlook, 
finer  aims,  and  clearer  self-knowledge,  and  such 
critics  may  be  in  their  turn  liable  to  misjudge  the 
significance  of  "new  windows"  opened  at  home. 
(Example.  Matthew  Arnold  and  his  attitude  to 
Tennyson,  Browning  and  other  contemporary  wri- 
ters.) Other  critics  again,  enamoured  of  certain 
features  in  the  national  life  may  show  little  jus- 
tice to  writers,   "schools"  or  movements  outside 

[373] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

their  own  bracing  program.  (Example.  The 
critical  policy  of  Mr.  Henley's  "National  Obser- 
ver.") The  critics,  in  fact,  perhaps,  should  be 
looked  upon  less  as  judges  responsive  to  demands 
for  justice  at  their  gates,  than  as  the  priests  of 
literature  vowed  to  their  special  creeds,  to  their 
own  particular  altars,  and  deaf  to  all  but  the 
favoured  communicants  within  their  sacred  walls. 
When  a  "new  window"  is  opened  revealing  a 
fresh  territory  of  the  mind,  is  not  the  average  cri- 
tic less  anxious  to  find  out  what  are  the  special 
laws  of  its  existence,  of  what  life  and  what  nature 
it  is  the  outcome,  than  to  establish  that  this  new 
territory,  this  new  mind,  ought,  according  to  such 
and  such  literary  standards,  to  be  something  rather 
different  from  what  it  is.  Undoubtedly  this  is 
criticism's  chief  work;  the  ushering  of  the  great 
procession  of  sesthetic  and  literary  standards  to 
announce  to  each  writer  "You  have  failed  here; 
you  have  succeeded  there ;  you  are  too  much  your- 
self, or  you  yourself  are  too  little."  This  is  the 
daily  work  of  criticism,  the  bringing  of  this 
Rhadamanthine  court  to  throw  its  shadow  over 
and  efface  all  productions  that  are  feeble  and 
malformed  at  birth,  the  continued  existence  of 
which  the  critic  deems  injurious  to  literature  it- 
self and  to  the  common  good.     But  this  formid- 

[374] 


THE   CONTEMPORARY   CRITIC 

able  process  explains  also  why  most  criticism 
has  merely  an  ephemeral  value  and  administers 
but  partial  justice;  for  in  trying  to  judge  where 
the  work  arrives  in  the  great  road  of  literature 
stretching  before  us,  the  critic  is  apt  to  discuss 
too  much  its  transitory  relations  with  the  sur- 
rounding world  to  which  it  speaks,  and  too 
little  its  permanent  relations  with  the  world 
from  which  it  has  come.  If  we  take  up  the 
sorriest  pamphlet  of  (say)  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury we  understand  what  it  is,  we  see  its  value  as 
literature  and  its  relation  to  the  life  of  its  age. 
The  critics  of  its  day  did  not  see  what  it  was;  they 
saw  what  it  "ought"  to  be  and  therefore  their 
"oughts"  passed  away  in  the  pomp  and  show 
of  transient  superiority.  The  critic's  "ought" 
rarely  explains  the  meaning  of  the  writer's  "is"  I 
The  contemporary  critic  will  therefore  understand 
by  justice  that  which  explains  the  "is,"  finds  the 
illuminating  light  it  casts  on  life,  and  does  not 
exclude  it  from  its  place,  because  it  "ought"  to  be 
rather  different  from  itself. 

Thus,  looking  at  the  relations  of  the  mass  of 
critics  to  the  literature  of  their  day,  the  contem- 
porary critic  aims  first  at  interpretation,  knowing 
that  he  must  be  prepared  to  controvert  current 
opinion,  and  yet  he  must  sympathize  with  his  age 

[375] 


FRIDAY    NIGHTS 

in  order  to  penetrate  to  its  meaning.  He  is  the 
arbitrator,  just  or  unjust,  between  the  individual 
men  of  his  age  and  his  age's  prevailing  tendencies, 
and  accordingly  he  will  prove  himself  less  of  the 
censurer  and  faultfinder  the  more  he  shows  in  his 
ideal  and  in  his  practice  that  he  is  the  explainer, 
the  demonstrator  of  what  writers  introduce  or 
reflect  in  contemporary  life.  His  aim  will  be  to 
account  for  authors,  to  explain  them  to  their  age, 
and  their  age  through  them — which  will  not  in- 
deed render  them  ultimately  less  dissatisfied  with 
him.  He  will,  however,  understand  that  it  is  his 
duty  to  resist  what  is  bad  in  literature  chiefly  by 
showing  what  tendency  it  represents,  by  tracing 
what  is  its  relation  to  contemporary  society  and 
the  contemporary  mind  from  which  it  springs. 
And  thus  the  critic,  in  inquiring  into  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  really  significant  tendencies  of  his 
time,  will  leave  to  the  academic  school  its  watch- 
word of  authority  as  applying  to  the  past,  and  will 
find  the  weapon  that  can  deal  with  the  present,  in 
his   chief  aim — Interpretation. 

Finally,  the  academic  and  the  contemporary 
critic  may  be  said  to  rule  over  different  provinces. 

The  function  of  the  former  may  perhaps  be 
defined  as  "the  interpretation  of  the  literature  of 
the  past,  and  the  promulgation  of  the.  highest  lit- 

[376] 


THE    CONTEMPORARY    CRITIC 

erary  canons  (of  the  past)  in  order  that  good  lit- 
erature (as  heretofore  understood)  may  be  perpet- 
rated." The  academic  critic,  in  any  case,  gathers 
in  the  honours  of  the  hist  word.  Willingly  we 
leave  the  silent  field  to  his  impressive  figure.  He 
frowns  at  the  birth  of  the  obscure,  but  his  sense 
of  duty  impels  him  to  officiate  at  the  obsequies 
of  the  illustrious  dead.  To  him  falls,  after  the 
lapse  of  centuries,  the  most  delicate  of  tasks — the 
task  of  marshaling  those  writers  who,  by  virtue  of 
their  qualities,  have  survived  the  censure  of  the 
academic  critics  of  their  own  day. 

1901 


[377] 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

RENEWALS  ONLY— TEL.  NO.  642-3405 

This  book  is  dae  oa  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or      i 
on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 

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RFn-ntD  M^ 

4  '/2  -ii  AM  '^  3 

nil   o  7  1070 

«JUL.    CI     IC7/  J 

c; 

lECTDtD   JUL  13 

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